Helping a brother traveling against traffic

Feb 06, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News- In this lovely country, the dirty jobs that others shun fall to me. Familiarity comes about what it is, to be consigned to a lower caste right here.

My hard job is to enlighten a wayward, rowdy brother, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, that he is going against traffic on a one-way road. The farther he races ahead, the deeper the troubles he creates for himself.  I am sorry Mr. Jagdeo: fewer and fewer Guyanese are fooled by those furious antics called Thursday afternoon press conferences; even his own are disgusted, recoil in disbelief.  Ordinary people know when they are being played, taken for fools.

Those are not press conferences, but press circuses.  They are not press conferences, but of the PPP General Secretary’s coarseness and looseness. With oil.  And reality.  And with walking a straight line.  If some think that I just made my friend Bharrat into a leader loving twists and turns, here’s an eyeopener: would somebody like me do that, actually think of deforming a man, especially a national leader?  Rethink such interpretations.  What I grapple with is helping a man who no one helps, who may be beyond help, so far gone is he.  But my devotion to Guyanese, my duty, involves lost causes, comatose cases, and last lap challenges.

Hence, I ignore the standards of Jagdeo’s press conference: the exaggerations, fulminations, deceptions, contradictions, evasions.  I know I discard a lot, but countless Guyanese (and foreigners) get the picture, harbor the same conclusions.  In one sentence, the Jagdeo press conferences are now counterproductive.  The more riots he initiates and leads, the more his own people see through him.  They need oil clarity, not oil secrecy.  They need a leader willing to answer any question (no matter how often asked) with straightness and not crassness.  Guyanese need to hear about oil money for themselves, to alleviate their impoverished condition.  The richest in the world is seen as a statistical degradation, because those percentages mock the destitute circumstances that fuel their desperation.

I had warned globally famous economist Bharrat Jagdeo that he must economize on the time wasted attacking the PNC and vilifying conscientious citizens.  Diminishing returns, I think the textbooks say so.  Guyanese-PPP Guyanese, PNC Guyanese, overseas Guyanese-see it as buying time through wasting time, so that there is less time to speak simply and truly about oil.  And oil returns to the people.  And oil rewards lifting the struggling and worrying in this society that is rich and that is hungry and sickly at the same time.  I encourage my student Jagdeo to spend quality time presenting quality information about oil and the true state of things in Guyana.

More Guyanese are hurting.  More Guyanese see who are benefiting.  Put the two together and there should be agreement that more citizens are discontented and disgruntled.  Not at the PNC, but at the PPP of Ali and Jagdeo.  Humble thyself, Lord Jagdeo, and appreciate that the more ranting there is, the more disbelieving Guyanese are.  It should be acutely concerning for Jagdeo, because his own people swell the ranks of disbelieving.  Why is he delivering one red herring after another (feasibility studies) to distract locals?  Why is he shutting down questions (Wales), if he has nothing to hide?  Why is he so hostile to the independent media (SN, KN) and is so much at home with stupidity and frivolity and deficiency (cast of willing, panting sycophants)?

When these Jagdeo customs and practices were new, Guyanese were brainwashed, didn’t care.  They see him now for what he is, and they don’t like the caricature and frightening apparition that he has made of himself.  Moreover, they now care, because there is the keenest recognition of being shafted, and it is not by the PNC.  May I ask Vice President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo to step to the podium and collect his Academy Award.

More than any other time in its history, Guyana needs a real leader.  Guyanese have no use for a pretender, an actor.  I have tried to pass the same message onto President Irfaan “Dr. Artifice” Ali and failed. His biggest artifice is that dodgy game called sanctity.  A company is sacred, a contract inviolable, but not the once majestic sovereignty of his country.  Is this a land with leaders, or one of losers?  There is Jagdeo with his Thursday afternoon hustles.  He is buying and selling.  Buying Exxon’s friendship and selling out his people’s patrimony.  His press conferences make that clear.  Jagdeo is for Exxon more than Darren Qoods and Alistair Routledge combined.  When he should be all for Guyanese, he turns into guerilla brawler against them.

The more that Jagdeo attacks today, the more he holds himself up to ridicule.  A sorry figure, he is.  I feel for this countryman.  The problem is that he has lost all feeling, now a machine answerable to Exxon’s commands.  His press conferences confirm this.  I caution him, attempt to counsel him.  The press conferences are now self-defeating.  Guyanese block (cork) their ears.  Some have already begun holding their noses.  Listening and adjusting are up to him.  I have done my duty.

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

(Helping a brother traveling against traffic)

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• contradictions, deceptions, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, fulminations, hard truths, PPP General Secretary’s

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