OP-ED: PPP Government – midterm leadership report

Mar 05, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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 By: GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – I have been weighing this, but didn’t want to risk losing friends in high places.  It is time for the PPP Government’s midterm leadership report.

An examination of the record of the last two and a half years confirms that the situation is normal (snafu).  President Ali is a canvas of contradictions; the Vice President is now a better dancer than Fred Astaire.  Focusing on his words and postures, the President is an Olympic skater, who would do well in both Summer and Winter games: he cannot walk his talk: a straight line.  He is gamesman and showman.  As for the Vice President, when pressed for clarity on projects and contracts, he becomes a ballerina: pirouetting, rolling around, floating about (and he doesn’t have a speech impediment).  How can Guyanese not love these leaders?  People starving and crying, they laughing, gyrating, having fun from de poor peeple ting.

Meanwhile, the entire PPP machinery is more exuberantly corrupt than before.  Election spoils.  It is freedom to steal without fear, which is what free and fear compresses into.  Many ministers and bureaucrats now waddle around in terribly overweight condition.  It is not body fat, but the fat of the land, viz., the people’s purse. Infrastructure billions.  Their tongues are green from US greenbacks, their lips dripping with downstream oil richness.  Buildings going up, real estate holdings expanding, and on and on.  More infrastructure.  Their hands are quicker than Bruce Lee in ‘Return of the Dragon.’  It is the return of the PPP, biggah and baddah than before, and it is a dragon.  Remember Mr. Su, from points east.  Something tells me that he is more CIA than China.Something whispers that the Yankees are unhappy.  Dirty people and corruption.

For a clearer picture on PPP-style government and leadership, it is best to zero on the lead vocalists, arranger and conductor.  He is Laxmikant and Pyarelal, with Zubin Mehta, and Balsara thrown in for good measure.  Talk about singing sitars!  I start with El Jefe.

Former Minister of Housing Ali, now His Excellency, President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali has become a glorious extension of his old ministerial self.  He is more aggressive. I can appreciate the President for thinking along the soaring lines the boxer Mohamed Ali who once said: “I’m so great that I impress even myself.”  Amen, I say. Somberly, the President claims he is of transparency, accountability, and unity.  He left out skater.  On the first two, he should have the courage to go on “60 Minutes” and explain why foreign dignitaries do not want to share his hospitality or the company of his people. I tender the US plenipotentiary, who has a nose for dirt.  Regarding the third leg in his wobbly presidential centipede, unity, I regret to inform my President that a bag of money to a set of handpicked community people of dubious reputation is not oneness.  Or brukkin up a PNC office.  Or bulldozing homes.

As for the Hon Vice President, it is said take the measure of the man, and there is the man.  The challenge is that the VP doesn’t stay still, but flits around, skips around, and trips about: a combination of the Drifters (all over the place), the Skyliners (yeah, all the way up there), and Death Row records (all the way to the chair).  No wonder the man has to space out his public presence and pick his words with chopsticks. I had warned everybody: start out on the wrong foot, and chronic foot in mouth results.  Look at the mighty VP: the man has to hedge as if walking on a ledge and in mortal fear of breaking some pledge.  He has become the brahmin of bull.  Or: if it sounds like fiction, reads like fiction, feels like fiction, then I regret that it is fiction.  It is best testimony that captures the essence of the VP, now Captain Fantasy.

Still, I have to love these two guys.  Thanks to their tireless efforts, there are few other countries where supporters think that chronic corruption is a democratic ideal, the fruits of free and fair, and with noble America endorsing that interpretation.  In this country, PPP Government agents actually believe that pathological lying is one of the Ten Commandments, and mandated by the Guyana Constitution.  Something tells me that that beauty came from one of the church people on the inside, with constant thievery now a sacred right of elected and selected Guyanese.  To lie is to live large, and with proof to tender.  Think budget, oil fund, loans, and infrastructure, and in tandem they form the PPP Government’s unfinished magnum opus at the midway point.  Thanks for a job well done!  America is proud.  And so is Exxon.  We have a skater and ballerina for leaders, and cheerleaders with pompoms urging them on.  I should get a contract to build something.

(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.)

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• GHK Lall, Government, leadership, PPP, Report

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