The Ali Presidency – two years on

Aug 02, 2022 Letters

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Dear Editor,

I congratulate His Excellency, President Ali on his two years at the helm.  The leadership and governance waters have been choppy; he has flinched at the peaks and foundered near the troughs.  On the former, I commend the Vice President for being near so that his protégé doesn’t stumble much.  He has. Regarding the lows, they have been alarming, wretched.  How does the record attest?

The Guyana Review saw the President as getting around, hobnobbing with foreign leaders.  I agree, but being Country-Western performer Ricky Nelson’s ‘traveling man’ is not the same as a presidential man.  Guyanese need some meat on the leadership skeleton, genuinely respected substance.  I planned to hand to the nation’s head-of-state, but grasp straws.  There is applause for relief funds, a good thing, but the benefits have vanished as if they didn’t happen.  COLA or tax relief nationally, anybody?  Similarly, applause goes for infrastructure billions for numerous projects, but building also masks the opportunity for billions to be siphoned off.  On the surface, aid and project billions glow with healthy presidential decisions; just below there are provisions for comrades’ self-enrichment.  It is not merely land piracy, but hijacking of integrity domestically, something which the President should think about, himself personify thoroughly.  My doubts abound, given who is behind his presidency, the people surrounding him, those he calls friends.  Thank God the President is not a landlord.  Considering Mon Repos and Buxton, I think the moniker ‘President Moneyman Ali settles nicely on his head, though I sense preference for Excellency Ali the Almighty.

Then, comportment and escaping strains of his speech give him away, with his Bartica beatdown being equal to taking a machete to a female puppy. Speechifying wise, the President is all toothy smiles and warmth; just don’t object to what he puts out, and ensure that his path is not crossed for there will be hell to pay.  I noted in the last two years, how he is not a man to be trifled with, must have his way, or he will get his people to straighten out naysayers, doomsayers, and scaremongers hollering that the emperor’s underwear is shredded. My word to the nation’s leader is that he makes better use of the syrupy symphonies his speechwriters craft for him: be courteous at all times (it makes man and leader), be a leader of friend and foe in taking sugary with sandpapery.  Unfortunately, the President now fancies himself a geometrician like Euclid.  He works the angles of words hoping some light will shine and reflect.  I remind the leader and his coaches that Jesus and the Prophet Mohammed had their resisters, while hoping that the President doesn’t see himself as either.  He did swear to be a healer, who prompts removing gloves for brother and leader, since I have appointed myself keeper.

His Excellency swore to three lynchpins during his inaugural, as I point to the straight and narrow road not taken.  He has strayed, a picture or orneriness and recklessness.  Today, I refuse to spoil this sketch by unsheathing such words as rottenness and foolishness.  Not when a President is the subject.  The point is that the President did commit, promise, I insist swear, that he was going to be about transparency, unity, and accountability.  I was thrilled, only to feel foolish quickly.  Delicately out, President Ali shouldn’t take oaths, since he has not been a persuasive ambassador of truth, which is the sole imperative that makes those three possible.  The President has been illuminating in being untransparent, with the feeble rays coming from him smudgy, smoky, and dirty.

The President has been disruptive where unity is concerned, with the macabre calculation behind the ‘One Guyana’ farce is that the politically uncooperative learn who is left out, and who matters. Simply test the evidence of bailouts and handouts. To retrace, he doles out billions, but punishes Regions 4 and 10; I observe a leader who is a partial and prejudiced social worker.  Yes, it is that glaring; of course, I am sure his Emancipation Day speech rang.  Still, he is a crisis manager of the sorts when pressure menaces.  Buxton shouldn’t have to break legs to get feet moving to there.  Simply sets a bad precedent because other places and people develop ideas.  Regarding the sticky issue of accountability, the corruptions are chronically local, with foreigners, highly meaningful players in enriching action.  Imagine an easterner could be awarded thousands of acres of land, plus many rich things, and nobody knows.  Why, the man, this tenant, is a national budget himself, needs his own PAC.  Remove principled regulators, dismantle regulations, and we live with the results.  On oil, the President has been a broad oil slick: greasy, slippery, tricky.

In brief, President had plenty vested in him-goodwill, empathy, hope-only to squander all.  Instead of Guyanese getting a leader governing nationally, we have a regular partisan political operator.  I leave with American oilman Carl Icahn and his helpful words: Those who get to be chosen chief: not the smartest, not the brightest, not the best, but…reliable.  It’s the survival of the un-fittest.”

 

Sincerely,

GHK Lall

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