H@rd Truths By GHK Lall – Amid the unthinkable, the unmentionable

Apr 18, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Let me be about love where there is hate. Let me be about serenity amid the putridity.  Let me about pardon where there is great injury. All of these must prevail today, if only for standards sake.

There was a time when anger flared easily.  No more, so unbreachable the armor.  Even disgust is a difficult state to reach, and it is not because of any jadedness from oversaturation by the dreadfulness now normalised in Guyana. It is because of the supreme confidence that this is the better way to walk this life.  It can be a draining standard, on rare occasions, but there must be the iron discipline to overcome amid a system of governance, a caliber of leadership that is decayed and twisted to the core.  I know Ms. Davina Bagot.  She qualifies to be a respected sister of mine, even a daughter.  As much as recoiling flares at what agents of the PPP Government did to her, I dig deep for calm amidst an unspeakable outrage, for the willingness to speak to His Excellency, President Dr. Irfaan Ali, my leader, my brother.  I confess that at a time like this I really do not wish to address my brother, the President. But I must.

President Ali was the one who said “we are an honorable government….”  I respectfully disagree, Excellency. Today, the disagreements are miles longer, oceans deeper, than before.  I present Journalist Ms. Davina Bagot, and she stands as what mocks any claims to the “honorable” Excellency.  An honorable government does not descend into the sewer to send the most scurrilous of signals to those engaged in honest toil, in the pursuit of truth, real truths. An honourable government does not employ so many people plagued by so many chronic sicknesses.  No, President Ali.  And, Excellency, leaders of stature do not include in their circle of workers either the sordid or the cowardly or the so criminally inclined.  It is but the smallest of steps, Dr. President, to progress with infectious energy from savaging with words from cyberspace to wounding in a physical manner due to rage and rancor flowing over into the uncontrollable, and also the unmentionable.

There were governments in Argentina and Chile that made a living by killing the reputation of others.  In time, they proceeded to other types of destroying.  In today’s Nicaragua, dissenting citizens are cutoff from the umbilical cord of their motherland.  It is of an enraged government again, and the brutes that are employed to do such dirty deeds.  How many steps are we away from that disfiguring state, Excellency Ali?

An honorable government, I take pains to remind the President, has no fear.  Of truth.  Of probing media.  Of honest journalists working on a principled basis to get the bottom of what is mysterious, when it should not be; to shed light where there is darkness, and which also should not exist; and to hold leaders and ministers accountable, when such is the thing most distant from their minds.

Similarly, I go to the lengths of humbly alerting President Ali that Ms. Davina Bagot’s rights have been tampered with, and in the worst ways that could be conceived.  Ms. Bagot’s right to work has been sabotaged.  Ms. Bagot’s right as a woman, right as a daughter of Guyana, right as a sister rising from this soil have all been stabbed and scorned and savaged in ways inhuman, by those possibly less than human.  Ms. Bagot’s right to freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom to live without fear andin peace have all been interfered with, and left hemorrhaging.

To President Ali, my brother, I am left with no choice but to say that those violations are the actions of a dishonorable government.  It is a government made insecure by its own secrets, a government frightened by the sum of its failures, its follies, and its endless farces.  I humbly recommend to my President Ali that he consults with his own trusted people to arrive at still better conclusions of the accuracy of everything that I put on the table in front of him. To his credit, it is my belief that the President is trying for a better standard of governance.  Regrettably, there are those destructive elements within his government that he should preside over, but which are not in his grasp, not under his control. Those dangerous and destructive components-some human, some the litany of corrupt practices-are bigger than the President himself, and of that it is my disturbing, unwanted duty to deliver to his face.

When a government does what is right, Dr. President, there is nothing to defend.  When governance is honorable, Excellency, there is no need to attack and libel and defame anyone, especially someone like Ms. Davina Bagot (as was inflicted on me).  And when leadership is characterized by an impeccability of sagacity, an immaculacy of dignity, then there is absolutely none under his or her watch who would dare to conceive such an ugly, deformed, and diseased thought and, then worse still, do it. President Ali: it is my terrible task to be the messenger and inform this nation and the world of the dreadful, criminal, state that Guyana is today, and the nature of the PPP Government that leads it.  I pray for my country.

(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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• flared, GHK Lall, His Excellency, President Dr. Irfaan Ali, unbreachable

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