We either commit to doing the right thing, or we don’t

Jan 28, 2021 Letters

Dear Editor,

I confess that the Hon. Leader of the Opposition knows how to pick them. He does so with one loser after another. First, there was that dual citizen bit that he blew up into a national crisis, and now this one about gifting (“Harmon supports policy on gifting -accuses PPP/C of hypocrisy” SN, January 26). My thoughts are shared.

I can’t believe that these are the people I supported. I can’t believe that this is the kind of leadership on the way forward for the Guyana that I cherished. Between them and the PPP, there is this tussle to decide which group’s leadership is the rottener, more of the gutter, and more deficient where principle and decency and honour are concerned. I don’t know about the Hon. Opposition Leader, but of this I know: I do not need any damn policy to guide my outlook, my positions, my decisions in life, where certain things are involved. I do not care what the PPP and its band of crooks are doing (they are); or how hypocritical that party is (it is very); or, for that matter, what the rest of the world is doing with giving and receiving gifts. That includes the PNC, the AFC, the RDC, and the CDC.

I have no issue with token gifts, or gifts of small and negligible amounts, though I prefer none at all be extended and accepted. But, for a senior official to take with a straight face and a heartfelt smile an item for a half million dollars, and then try to rationalize that, to boot, is revealing as to the depths to which this society has fallen. I think that Mr. Burnham would have had a serious problem. I am extremely doubtful that his 21st century leadership equivalents in the PPP would have any problems at all, so lacking in morality and integrity they are. As an aside, I will concede that the Hon. Opposition Leader is on the money with that one about PPP hypocrisy, which he should have bolstered by pointing to Pradoville, that largely upscale and apartheid enclave, and tell the Guyanese public about the tens of millions of free labor (gifts) and free materials (more gifts), and free consulting and advising and following up efforts that were so readily made available, because of expectations of quid pro quos (still more political gifts) down the road.

Now the former minister may not have known (should not be expected to) that what was ‘gifted’ to him was in the vicinity of what it was priced by the jeweler and took from the Guyanese taxpayer. But he should have known also that it was not for GY$10,000, even GY$20,000, but considerably more, as in six figures. And that alone makes it unacceptable and returnable immediately. Not on the taxpayers’ dime. Not on my watch. Not to me. No way in hell. And should the Hon. Leader of the Opposition harbour any doubts about what I say that I represent and with which I have endeavored strenuously to live, then I recommend he consult with his colleague, the former minister responsible for natural resources, and his brethren who was/is high up in the PNC’s organization chart. The latter shared three years of a distinctive strain of public service with me at a state agency. The only policy was the personal standard that prevailed. Let this admission be placed on the record: temptations do come, and they are difficult to overcome; but they are always vanquished. Seductions appear, and those too must be labored against, with success only achievable if the heart is in the right place. Sometimes, a stumbling comes, but that has to be minimal and the exception, rare pardonable exception.

When anyone operates at this level, and with such a mindset, then there is neither interest nor care with what the other fellow did or still is doing; priorities and strengths are concentrated with holding one’s head high and that only comes by living in that peculiar way that is now so alien to Guyanese. It is why I am troubled by this shifting and parsing by the Hon. Leader of the Opposition for a safe harbour. I say to him unambiguously: there is none, sir. We either commit to doing the right thing, or we don’t. And when we do, then we live life as it should be lived, and love it all over again.

Yours truly,
GHK Lall

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