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A response to government loyalists

Jun 15, 2025 Letters

Dear Editor,

Kaieteur News – The southern American expression “A hit dog will holler” was brought to Guyana in a coordinated response across the controlled media to my letter appearing last week under the caption Destroying the Integrity of the Presidency. Featuring media houses closely connected with the State and roleplaying by varying persona large and small, they have cast me in the memorable role of the Brave Little Tailor of “Seven at One Blow” fame, their combined failure allowing me to entertain the thought that Guyana has more unfeathered than feathered parrots, that we are one big soup kitchen. What emerges from their collective effort is not a defence of presidential conduct, but pseudo intellectualism and cowardly attacks from individuals whose supper depends on how often and how they mix up the pot.

Notably, not one respondent addressed the substantive issues I raised concerning President Ali’s conduct: concealing the expenses on Silica City, his vanity project; the documented WhatsApp evidence of a President engaging in communication with the taxman; abandoning a public pledge to rebalance a most lopsided contract; the hidden Clyde & Company report; and the systematic undermining of constitutional and statutory bodies. Having documented numerous cases of tax concessions and benefits granted outside of the law, I can attest that such irregular practices are far from isolated incidents.

Most telling is President Ali’s refusal to establish a Commission of Inquiry to examine these matters – the one action that could definitively clear his name. Only a guilty person would refuse such an opportunity when the constitutional power rests entirely in his hands. And is there another way to describe a government that goes to court to challenge the award of a meagre pension equivalent to two hundred United States dollars per month to Zainul, a poor but dignified former carpenter while channeling hundreds of millions to friends and supporters than morally bankrupt and devoid of basic human decency?

To the first respondent, who refers to me as a friend, I am reminded of Caesar’s final words: “Et tu, Brute?” There is something particularly damning about betrayal couched in friendship’s language when all is done in the name of opportunism.  Regarding questions about electoral preferences, my answer is simple: NOTA – None of the Above. When choices are between persons who are seriously compromised, including a president who has diminished my country’s highest office for party and supporters’ profits, the principled position is rejection.

To another, your transformation from closet critic to fervent defender illustrates how lucrative appointments alter perspectives -a la Martin Carter. To anyone who thinks that embracing facts is engaging in extremities, and who possesses that rare and unprecedented wisdom to equate a simple accountant with billionaire and liberal democrat George Soros, I say, thanks but no thanks. To them both, I say, some knives cut three ways – toward enemy, friend and, ultimately, oneself. Their blade has found all three targets.

As for those respondents vying for bit parts (extras in the film business), they constitute the “et al” of the government dependency support cast whose feeble attacks are unworthy of any response, or respectability. Among these is one who substitutes fantasy and creativity – embellished with racist undertones – for truth and accuracy, qualities identified with the fiction shelves in the library.

But they all have one thing in common. Their very existence depends on the electoral success of their party, are probably otherwise unemployable, and therefore deserve some understanding, but not respect.

I reserve my final words for the President himself. As a practicing Muslim, he knows that the Prophet (peace be upon him) declared that “a word of truth before a ruler” is among the highest forms of jihad. Hurtful they might be, they are the unblemished truth while his defenders swear that the emperor’s clothes are made of the finest silk when honest men, women and children can see that he stands naked.

Christopher Ram

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