Resign or be removed

Apr 14, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News- In four words, attorney-at-law, Ms. Melinda Janki, cut to the quick in the instance of the Commissioner of the Office of Information. “Resign or be removed” leaves no room for manoeuvre, none for further discussion.

There are two ultimatums in those four words that have the power of jagged stilettoes. To pierce through resistance.  To tear down arrogance.  To wreak havoc with the consciousness of the sober.  And to make any self-respecting human being, one with some modicum of standards, look at himself or herself with shame, if not utter scorn. Is this what I have degraded to, where I have fallen, how I am seen by fellow citizens?  “Resign or be removed” has a non-negotiable finality to it.  Ms. Janki’s call, more like a gauntlet thrown down, takes things to a way higher level than I did.

On the first Friday of the protests, I took the liberty of extending a little courtesy to the retired attorney general.  “Deliver or depart.”  Some slack was cut to make good on the duties of the Office of Commissioner of Information.  Or there is the door.  No helping hand, no command from the top, should be needed to find the way out.  Whatever is done, it is done voluntarily, and with whatever residue of dignity left still intact.

Do duty or go thine own way, on thine own strength.  Attorney Janki scaled passed those fences: resign!  In other words, get out the way, get out of that office.  Or, get pushed out, kicked out, or carted out, whichever works, whichever is more appropriate to the circumstances.  From the past, I recall some who had to be fetched out, so adamant they were that their absence would be an unaffordable, irreplaceable loss to this country.  The Commissioner of Information should weigh all of this and then decide on his best move.  One is not his to make anymore.  He must go, and the sooner the better.

Placards and media coverage noted the figure of the Commissioner of Information seen hiding, seeking sanctuary, behind curtains.  This is the sorry place to which access to information, the office related to such access, and the officer standing as the controller of that access, has come, takes root.  Sanctuary sought behind curtains.  It is the feeblest, the flimsiest, and the most farcical of sanctuaries.  It is said that patriotism is the last sanctuary of scoundrels.

The Commissioner of Information-normally overwrought, never less than exuberant, and always verbose beyond the point of extravagance-should have a profusion of thoughts and words to share.  How he has transformed his office, identify the barbed wires he has placed around it, absorb the public contempt he has attracted to his head.  He may not care.  But when an officer holding a national office seeks the comfort of curtains, he fears.  He cannot face the full flow of light, so he falls back in search of any space that will offer him temporary respite from the slings and arrows that have been justifiably aimed in his direction.

A simple comment is posed for the benefit of President Irfaan Ali: The Commissioner of Information’s responses- often crude, frequently abstruse, and regularly envenomed with his spleen- cannot be representative of the transparency that had the unbreakable seal of a presidential edict stamped all over it.  How can that be of the promised transparency, Mr. President, when the Commissioner of Information’s office has deteriorated to that of a mere keeper of official secrets?  When appalling arrogance takes the place of access, then what is that, if not a servant of the people- a paid servant, a regular hired hand- putting on airs and pretending to be the public’s master?  When access to information, as provided for by law, all 14 years of it, has become so blinded that it has to hide behind blinds, then this cannot be a democracy.  It is of the weak and pitiful playing at tyranny, and not recognising, not caring, about the spectacle, into which some make themselves.  A man whose name means much to him would resign.  He wouldn’t wait to be removed.  No job is worth the repelling disgrace.  No amount of money rationalizes staying.

When he prolongs his stay, the only thing that the Commissioner of Information succeeds in doing is to confirm how much of a placeholder he has become.  This is what the law in Guyana has come to; this is what a man who is lost in his own haze now takes pride from: a position that pushes him into the role of a pawn.  It baffles me how the Irfaan Ali government is such a winner in locating the characters it gets to do these jobs in a certain way.  Oversight of the Oil Fund is a joke—just a rubber stamp, in the words of someone directly involved.  The big tender board is a farce, with its premediated mysteries.  Public procurement stewardship is a circus, with some of its performers loving the role of stooges.  There are others in this self-shaming pantheon.  Whatever number it is, there is the Office of Access to Information cut from that same secretive and dubious mold.  A rational man would resign.  A prudent president would remove him.  Deliver is out.  Resign or be removed is what must be.

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

 

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