H@rd Truths By GHK Lall – Press savaging, leadership inciting

May 04, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

Kaieteur News – I salute all Guyanese media practitioners. This includes those who may not have matched up well to the hallowed label of principled press professional. There is no value in disparaging those who fail to make the mark; it is more wholesome, if all are to grow, that we learn from each other-writers, readers, publishers, and reporters-as we seek to exemplify how we can be better, and gently so. I do so at this time when press freedom is under attack, when its vaunted independence is found fault with, causes great leadership disruptions. I start with His Excellency, President Ali.

GHK Lall

His Excellency was at Leonora recently, where he is the favourite son. I think he made a misstep, and it involved the press, a member who had been libeled and defamed in the worst way imaginable, by the President’s own people. For emphasis, the President’s own people. While Excellency Ali was at Leonora, and so also was the abused and intimidated media professional, Ms. Davina Bagot, a daughter of Guyana. A daughter no less than the son that Irfaan Ali is. President Ali knew what was volleyed at her, the vileness, odiousness, rottenness. But President Ali did nothing. President Ali said nothing. President Ali made not a single move. Other than hastening to his waiting vehicle, and leaving promptly. As said, His Excellency Ali made a misstep; a misstep that was not one of his finer hours.

From my perspective, a product of my grooming, training, absorbing, and learning, it would have been an example of leadership, statesmanship, and utter class for President Ali to venture these few little things. The President should have taken a step towards Ms. Bagot, with smile of recognition, and hand of welcome extended. President Ali did not have to say, ‘I am sorry.’ In fact, he didn’t have to utter a single word. But by that leadership gesture, he would have sent a strong signal to all Guyanese.

First, what happened is not what I stand for, can never be condoned. Second, what was experienced will not happen again. Third, it is a guarantee stamped with the seal of the Presidency. The nation’s leader did not have to say a word. But the message would have been unmistakable, possessing an unspoken ferocity in its delivery. It is my belief that, as President Ali grows into his role, he will get better at the statesmanship and leadership that he turned his back on when the opportunity presented itself. It was a golden one to register his wrath, to articulate his authority, and to reassure press professionals, and all Guyanese that his PPP Government will make amends, that it will do what is right.

No President can ever stoop so low that he presides over circumstances and people that lead to our women being assaulted, our sisters being in fear due to raging and rampaging domestic hands. I regret immensely that the President sent the worst possible message when he took convenient refuge in vehicular flight. When the press is hampered, Guyanese are hurt. When our female reporters are injured, Guyanese feel the pain. I feel the pathos that has visited this land still loved, despite its grievous miscarriages. I strive to manage amidst the carnage of its barbarisms and vandalisms that seek out like guided missiles those found to be repulsive, because they intrude into places that the Government prefers to be secret, sealed. Because there are those objectionable Guyanese of the independent press that dare to push and probe, as part of their persistent interrogations of what really is going on with the nation’s many patrimonies.

I fear that were this to continue along the destructive lines, and at the spiraling levels, of recent, then it is only a matter of time before the pretenses are abandoned, and the proud armbands are worn publicly. They would be those with swastikas imprinted all around them. I humbly call on President Ali (my president) to use his might to right undeniable, incontestable wrongs. The President must make it his duty to seize the high ground, and then aim higher still, and not just for the press, but for all the Guyanese people.

In fairness, I discern that President Ali is trying, but he stares at the craggy and the uphill. He is surrounded on his left and on his right, above and below, by a cohort of men and women largely captive to what caresses the coarse, what is at home with the twisted, the distorted, and the crooked. When he should have mentors, he has to make do with monsters. When his companions should be helpers, he has the hounds of hell that toil diligently to undo his efforts, to degrade his leadership and government. They delivery the unmentionable, so completely repugnant is the sum of their exploits, their practices, their low cultures.

Undoubtedly, President Ali suffers terribly from that fatal handicap of political leaders: one for all and all for one. Separate from the ravenous pack, Excellency. Show what is there, demonstrate the substances made of, and let everyday be press Freedom Day. Truth is truth, and of that there should be absolutely no fear.

(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.)