Jagdeo break-dancing; tight-rope walking 

Aug 15, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

Kaieteur News – I am caught between two extremes when Guyana’s chief oil policy mandarin, Bharrat Jagdeo, is part of the discussion.  First, there are waves of laughter at the holes that he digs for himself; the second is I feel sorry for the leader and brother.  When I watch from a distance how he manages Guyana’s great oil treasure, the thought solidifies that Jagdeo should have been at the 2024 Paris Olympics.  He would have been a surefire gold medal winner in breakdancing, tightrope sleepwalking, backflipping, and trapezing.  Clean sweep for champ and country.

GHK Lall

I laugh at the big Guyana oilman who bit off more than his mouth could hold when he assigned himself sole control of the national oil portfolio.  Talk about choking and gurgling helplessly, and Jagdeo is the man.  The man requires an expert in Heimlich manoeuvre therapy on constant call to free his airwaves.  I laugh at him when he tries to bluster and bully his way out of answering tough questions on his management and decision-making with the people’s patrimony.  The more he futzes and flails futilely, the more I am seeing the dancing bear President Ali.  Who learned from whom, that is the polite inquiry, if I may?  I laugh at the master prevaricator when he tries walking sideways for extended periods, only to lose his way.  I laff at him when he turns his gaze sideways, speaks from the sides of his mouth, and ends up making himself a sideshow and a side joke.  I give him a helping hand: Guyanese are bored stiff with his antics and facial tics, with his own disgruntled people leading the growing army of disillusioned.  Those are not answers to the burning questions surrounding oil.

Get a new act, Oil Champ Jagdeo.  It is time to jettison such escape strategies (farces) as ‘answered before’ and ‘answered a million times’ and ‘talk to Vick.’ It is another patented Jagdeo dead-end and Guyanese have been dealing with him [BJ] for too many long disappointing years not to see through that slick shift that dangles Minister Vick as bait.  To be frank, that newest Jagdeo three-card move is what gives Guyanese the shivers.  They are still hanging for want of one straight oil answer.  Even more frankly, the natural resources man has since unveiled the new Minister Vick Bharrat: a brand-new political religion taken up.  It is one that requires vows of silence, plus total abstinence from anything to do with shedding light on Guyana’s storybook oil riches. It is the stuff of fairies and wicked witches.  PPP operational fairies are known quantities, but I throw in fiendish wizards to maintain gender neutrality and balance.  I can’t stop laughing (not loving to remove any Ray Charles ideas) at brother Bharrat J: he tied bundles with the white brothers, so now he must parrot their lines.  About judicial predictability.  About parent company guarantee.  About investor sentiment and they are spooky people.  About return on investment for Exxon et al now and maximizing returns for Guyanese up the road.

I am reduced to laugher, not anger, when this world champion Guyanese oil leader convinces himself that all Guyanese are deaf, dull, and daft.  To keep him on level ground: all Guyanese minus this one, skipper chief.  Bottom line: when I watch Jagdeo gliding clumsily, goring reporters arrogantly, and making a pathetic spectacle of himself, I see a man selling smoke and the stuff of the sewer and pushing Guyanese to believe that it is snow.  Pure, clean snow, no; one snow job after another, yes.  When a man must shelter behind the Fifth (his right against self-incrimination), the reflexive thought is what does he have to hide with this oil?  Plenty, many locals believe.  My stand is ‘how plenty is plenty?’

I also feel sorry for brother Jay.  He gets bombarded from all angles.  SN editorials that enrage.  Peeping Tom articles that see much, shout more, scorch his waking hours.  If I were to say Lall, any of such colourful characters, epilepsy episodes gather stormy energy in Jagdeo, send him off the deep end.  It is too much for one man, no matter how invincible he may fool himself into thinking that he is.  When it is not what he is doing about ring-fencing, it is taxes.  Before he could stutter and sputter about those two, Jagdeo gets many fusillades and still more broadsides about interest rates and the rate at which he carries on.  Damnit! The man isn’t even allowed to hold a press conference the way he wants.  That is, bully his way, take advantage of some little people, and chatter nonstop about how he is the best thing that Guyana has ever had going for it.  Meaning, before and after the Georgetown Seawall.  According to Jagdeo, if it wasn’t for him, Guyanese would still be living without electricity and in slavery.  He conveniently forgot the new ones that he perpetuates.  Truly, I feel sorry for the man Jagdeo.

He lectures Guyanese about how oil bright he is and many of those same Guyanese point to Alistair Routledge and ask what he is still doing here.  He and his billboards.  He and his cricket sponsorship.  Please keep him far from the li’l duck curry competitions is all I ask.  Jagdeo brought all of this on his head.  All he had to do was humble himself a tad, listen.  Implement also.  Instead, he snarled and slapped his hand on the table, set his dogs free.  He knows who, how, and against whom.  I told Jagdeo and many of his PPP brethren that the Americans may be boisterous, but they don’t have much regard for blowhards, bloviators, and those who Guyanese call Christmas blow-blows.  They cooled him down with OFAC, then cornered him with Nigel Hughes.  On the former, the word is that Jagdeo fingerprints may be around developments.  Re the latter, the Yanks blindsided him.  That is my story with my oily brother Barry: laff story first; sorry city later.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

• Bharrat Jagdeo, discussion, Leader, mandarin, rope