Guyana’s President and the perversion of a promise…

Dec 19, 2021 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – I was encouraged in August 2020, when Guyana’s head of state, His Excellency, President Ali promised to be about transparency and accountability. I thought that this young Guyanese thrust into the glare of the national, regional, and international spotlight, as this country’s national leader was owed a clear field, and the luxury of time to prove himself, for the better, or for worse. I gave him the room to deliver on what were more than leadership promises, but that which rose to the level of hard, powerful commitments to transparency and accountability.
The President passed the first test. He said the right things in the right pitch at the right pace, and the right inflections and emphases that such grand things as transparency and accountability require. Most regrettably, it is the only test that President Ali has passed since that fateful August, so filled with hope and dreams. In many Guyanese minds, revulsion has since replaced them. Revulsion because the President has disappointed, failed miserably to honour his word, his promise, his commitment to transparency and accountability. He who came with something different (I so believed) has been nothing but standing over the same shabby, rancid, appalling barbarities, as before, and which have now come to characterise his sickly-sweet presidency.
It is disturbing that he who held out so much, has deteriorated to nothing but the savage shallowness of words, someone in a suit that speaks to the ways that perversions have saturated his promise. I offer examples that are familiar to brethren, including his own fawning followers. They know, I know, all Guyana knows.
Guyanese were sickening, dying, and filled with the frightening. COVID-19 and flooding were the first examples. The President announced the right thing – relief billions for the suffering hundreds of thousands of strapped Guyanese. Then, the bottom fell out, because whenever money is around and his people (PNC people, too) smell money, they lose their minds. They do anything for money, even steal money that helps the needy, hurting, dying; they also play politics. These are the kinds of wastrels who we have for public servants and party comrades here. They find ways to profit personally (even if to be had from their mother’s tragedy… funeral). They are damnable to the extreme for the corruptions.
But what of the President? Of this, he prefers not to know, to govern with a bag over his head, saying, doing absolutely nothing. In his book, from his academic training, this is what he interprets transparency and accountability to be. His handpicked people (the VP’s really) make awards for hundreds of millions to the unqualified and unproven, and the President celebrates that as transparency and accountability. It is where the perversions of his ringing promises condemn him. It is a sorry state for a head of state.
It is a still sorrier state and disturbing to behold what his lovely VP (in the topsy-turvy world of Guyana, his omnipotent, unchallengeable master) has done with this oil. When the President stepped into the dog turd that is oil, he soiled himself most embarrassingly. The smell has traveled all the way to Houston, Texas and back. He said that oil secrecy is transparency. This is what I call the most exemplary perversion of the English Language that I (must) have encountered. Abuse of language is one painful matter; abuse of truth and trust is another one altogether. And when both occur, especially the latter, then there is no turning back, no curing.
About 7-8 days ago, the PPP Government, with the VP as spokesman, announced a push to dismantle two protective controls in current legislation over this oil. The word is that they are too cumbersome and complex. I am sorry that I can’t agree, for even though that may be so, this chronically corrupt country needs every stitch of oversight and control that it can get. Demolishing them knocks out anti-corruption safeguards and makes more costly corruptions easier. Perhaps, the President also thinks that those are good things, and transparency and accountability will be well-served.
To my fellow citizens, Guyanese and American, have a healthy and safe holiday season. And do remember: get vaccinated.
(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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