OP:ED - The Bidens - Kaieteur News

OP:ED – The Bidens

Feb 03, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

By: GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – President Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter Biden are up to their necks in a deep pile of manure. It is self-inflicted in both instances, with the father incurring some shades of sympathy, while the son should be thrown into a cell, and the key conveniently disappearing. The guy is so wily, this son is so prodigious in his pursuits of all that is perverse, it is likely that he would find it.

GHK Lall

The son’s record is of corruption scandals, family failures (child support), falsehoods, and tax fraud, among a litany of heavy wrongdoings. He is a father’s worst nightmare, a leader’s Achilles heel. I look at our leaders in both the old and new PNC, the previous and present PPP, and how they have been wounded by their own, and often by their own self-destructive hand. My position is simple: we are all adults, and accountable for our actions: take it on the chin, fall on one’s sword. In one word, it distils to this: accountability. So, when the day of reckoning comes, there has to be an end to all the fancy dancing, and the flurry of fancier words and postures. What goes for American, also goes for good ole Guyana. The President’s son should be made to feel the full arm of the law, after due process is fully observed. As for Guyana, the President better serves the dignity of his office, when interference is not run for those who fall afoul of claims involving briberies, collusions, and betrayal of the trust of citizens.

There is only one way: Leaders and Losers (in and out of the family) must come clean, face the music. As the late legal swashbuckler, Johnnie Cochran once said: do the crime, do the time. This is the sum of my relationships, be it the biological family, the political family, the spiritual family. None of this paternal (and unpresidential) protection, and the sniffer dogs being held in check, or sent off the scent. Like I keep saying, once a start is made with the defense of lying, then lying is the way that it has to be from there forward. We have had our own corruptions allegations involving the scandalous at the heights, and we do well to recall the vagueness and vacillations of the targeted. There was also the vacuousness of the sea of sycophants, who did rush ahead in truly mindless fashion to tender what is believed to be powerful defenses, only for all to get sucked in, and become aiders and abettors themselves.

President Biden did not come out in a clear and convincing manner with his son and his troubles. Yes, he is father; but he is the father to a thousand obligations that I believe surpass that of arranging matters for a wayward and wastrel child. If this sounds familiar, it is, for this is precisely what was the experience here, when a leader and a brother got ensnared in the runoffs and fallouts of sharp, hard inquiry. Though swept under the carpet, it remains rancid and unresolved. From my assessment, this is also what the president’s men have worked to deliver in the instance of the president’s son. If that reminds of the Watergate disaster and well-placed men toiling overtime to insulate a sitting president through covering up, then that also hits the jackpot.

For his part, President Biden has his own troubles, and they keep mounting. Classified documents found in improper and unsecured places, even unofficial ones, then more of the same slackness. Though there are ongoing evaluations for an interpretation of what was classified from Joe Biden’s pile of papers, and how classified was classified, there cannot be any deviation from the standard to which his predecessor in the White House is held. The latter may not the endearing figure that Joe Biden is, but the same intensity to official duty must prevail with the probers. In my book, President Biden is now a lost figure, who just putters around, and dodders around, in a daze most of the time. The disaster in the making is both men are determined to run in 2024.

It is imperative that Presidents are held to the highest standard, an almost inhuman one. I do so of them. In this regard, I think that President Biden keeps showing his age more and more, and the frailty that accompanies its advance. He himself has lost touch, and now US Government papers; and he lost credibility in the matter of his son’s tawdry affairs, business and otherwise. Like the wives of sitting presidents, sons should also be vigilant to maintain a profile that is low, lacking in dispute, and leaving no trail that tracks right back to the Oval Office. Perhaps, that explains why it is oval since there are often so few people inside that can be considered to be truly straight to the bone. Guyana’s own President should consider the deepness of what is gently shared for his edification.

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