Thanks for the publicity Jagdeo

Jun 05, 2023 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard truths…

By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – The word came to me from several corners that I featured in Guyana’s Vice President of Oil, Bharrat Jagdeo’s most recent press conference held at Freedom House. Though it was only in the role of a Guest Star, I must still extend thanks to my brother, Jagdeo, for the publicity. As politicians and the marketing people insist, there is no such thing as bad publicity, for publicity is publicity. And from what I heard, Jagdeo gave me the equivalent of a Superbowl commercial.

I assure all and sundry that there is no disrespect meant, but I do not listen to brother Jagdeo, nor do I seek opportunity to absorb his rich fare, now that he has abandoned his role as chief steward for Guyana and has developed a love for being the chief advocate and spokesman for Exxon.

Whatever he said, he said, but I would hope that he rose to the occasion and spoke to genuine truth, and not his brand of it. I am still at a loss to understand what could have unsettled Jagdeo so much, that he put the spotlight on a nonentity like me, when he has the fate and destiny of a whole country in his caring and compassionate hands.

On second thoughts, I should drop destiny since the mantra of his beloved PPP is now ‘One Guyana’ and nothing more. I always suspected that there were sound reasons for eliminating ‘destiny’ from that vision and construction, and for the simple fact that the Guyanese people now have none, and that it is only the destiny of foreign investors that matters to brother Jagdeo.

When the PNC executed (a fit and proper word) that oil contract in 2016 with the American supergiant, Exxon, it was a tragedy of Himalayan proportions. Now, brother Jagdeo has picked up right from where his predecessors in office left off, and engages in one travesty after another, by keeping the contract intact. I happen to have acquaintance with a few of Exxon’s American veterans, and none of them can hold a candle to my own dear brother Jagdeo, for energy, effort, and bubbling effervescence.

Clearly, Jagdeo needs to reconfigure his priorities, especially now that he has a whole nation watching how he performs. He simply has too much on his plate (and glistening pate) to get bogged down with the likes of me. He should focus more on what he does best, which is floating like a butterfly, and flaring [up] more than Exxon does out there in oil land.

While I am at it, may I also respectfully suggest that he recalibrates himself in the departments of churlish attitudes, petulant emotions, and puerile reactions to citizens seeking to lift him out of the darkness that he loves so much. Obviously, whatever I am doing has drawn some sandpaper across his skin, and needled deeply into some of his always sensitive nerves.

As it is said: Truth hurts; and absolute truth strips naked. How else to interpret this volatile behaviour of brother Jagdeo? He must work harder to be rid of these leadership tantrums; they are not good form, and will not do. After all, there are those visitors that he thinks of so highly and holds so dearly, which would be his prized foreign investors. They do not like to be near to anything or anyone that brings back recollections of Josef Stalin and Vladimir Lenin, and the hatreds of those Soviets for deviationists and those declared to be degenerates. Not good for business, very bad for capitalist’s profits. Like the evergreen Sam Cook sang and made many swoon: a change is gonna come. oh yes, it will….

I thought that after his many years as President that the now Vice President of almost three years vintage would have matured, grownup, and shed that kind of skin forever. He must not see enemies where none (at least not this one) are, and not to imagine shadows that don’t exist, but which haunt his existence. He would do well to recall that America gave Guyana democracy, and one of its lynchpins is freedom: freedom to think, freedom to speak, freedom to write, freedom to associate, freedom to differ.

Now that Guyana’s own, Bharrat Jagdeo is rubbing shoulders with Americans and Europeans, he has to know that he will have to comport himself better. He must cease being such a bundle of uncaring contradictions, and desist with his now patented ambiguities. All this stomping of feet, and lashing out, at those who disagree, has to go. I hope that Jagdeo is not pushing to have a Guyana where all men think alike. For if that ever becomes the case, then no one would be thinking at all. Count me out of that, for there are times when being a contrarian is more than a call to duty. It is a closely held, mandatory patriotic obligation.

Now, I trust that better things will come from him going forward. Try it, brother Jagdeo, it can be done. There is every confidence that higher ground will be found, if only in the trying.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of Kaieteur News.

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• Exxon, Freedon House, oil, One Guyana, PPP, Press Conference, VP Bharrat Jagdeo

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