H@rd Truths By GHK Lall – The VP has the tools, he must use them

Apr 22, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Libraries can be filled with what has been written about Guyana’s Vice President.  It has been mostly of what is dark.  Instead of adding another chapter to what is widely believed to be a sordid litany of the dangerous and destructive, I take another tack, start all over, on this occasion.  In my efforts to raise the bar on our national conversations, this is what will be the norm, with the bar raised first and highest on myself.  Some may think that there is joy, possibly some mysterious psychic benefit, from stripping the Vice President, but of which nothing could be more remote from the truth, what is in the heart.

A start is made by addressing my brother, the Vice President by his name.  I give Bharat Jagdeo that courtesy, that dignity that is due to all human beings.  The thinking is that this would be good for Guyana, regardless of what sacrifice has to be made by me.  This is what matters, for as this brother takes off and soars, so can this country; so, can every citizen.  He soared with his condemnation of what was hurled at KN reporter, Ms. Davina Bagot.  I congratulate the VP; it is momentous.  Now please rein in the reckless, the damaging.

Jagdeo has been branded with an incredible amount of rough stuff, but I move on, notwithstanding whether such has been richly earned; or that many Guyanese maybe so off the mark.  So many foreign presences officially resident here, so many fleeting overseas visitors, too, when the subject of his name and what he stands for come under the spotlight. This is what I say, and this is where I stand.

Dr. Jagdeo, a former President, has the tools that could carve out a better Guyana.  So, why isn’t he?  Why are we not distinctively better, save for a paltry few?  Dr. Jagdeo, Vice President and Chief Oil Minister, possesses the accumulation of skills, and the combinations of them, that could be put to use, so that there is a Guyana that is proud because it is prosperous.  Its people are ecstatic because they have been treated with respect.  Not because they have been taken for granted, and don’t care.  Not due to them being taken advantage of, but of which they are purposely ignorant.  Not from them being dismissed as being so limited that they are unable to grasp the commonsense essentials of what are their circumstances, what their environment holds, and what should be coming to them from it.  No, it is not any of those unhappy situations.

The Guyanese people, the sum of them in their distant hamlets, and their nearby houses of glitter, are happy and proud because Dr. Bharat Jagdeo would have brought the full weight of his considerable talents and energies put to the best use for those who love him, those who appreciate him, those who kiss the ground on which he walks.  All of that would be great and glorious.  But when Dr. Jagdeo makes the fullest, the most sagacious, employment of his gifts for those who neither love nor appreciate nor have any good thing to say about him and his actions, then he has transcended into that realm where immortals reside.  And reign righteously; well if that is asking too much, then at least rightly most of the time.

I think that former President Jagdeo, Vice President Jagdeo, and Oil Minister Jagdeo is capable of doing so, of turning that corner, of reading all that that new book and everyone of its pages has to say by way of instruction.  I speak not of Bible, nor Koran, nor Sanskrit.  I write of the sacred book of clean and conscientious life that we make our own.  I study how the Vice President’s people, and he himself, go after those who disagree with him, object to him.  My small word of counsel is why not marshal and redirect those passions, those energies, all those constructs towards those who make the best of our vast patrimony, while we claw in our self-imposed wilderness of loathsome enterprises, and of reptilian venomousness.

Instead of seeing enemies in the local terrain, brother Jagdeo, I point to the international terrorists that have established impregnable bastions on our soil to reap the fruits of our seas.  In keeping with the tone and temperature of this offering, there will come a time when that word “terrorists” will no longer apply, for by then the Guyanese people would have gotten what is rightly, richly theirs.  If I am wrong, a hated enemy, for harboring these thoughts, then I am ready for any impalement, though I would prefer that such not be.

I think that Bharat Jagdeo could find the courage to fight valiantly for Guyanese, but first he has to find the substances of that nobility of character that has neither been visible nor audible in the least of its echoes.  I give him my vote of confidence: I think he is capable of doing so.  But only if those same substances become his leadership imperatives, his guiding star, and unswervingly so.

For too long we have hurled the savaging.  We have hurt each other grievously.  Let us all commit to starting over.  I do.

(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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• benefit, GHK Lall, KN reporter, Ms. Davina Bagot, psychic

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