H@rd Truths By GHK Lall – Issues with Bharrat Jagdeo – Setting record straight

Jun 21, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

Kaieteur News – It is time to clear the air. Concerns about the man, the citizen, Bharrat Jagdeo are secondary in considerations, discarded to graveyards. I have serious problems, however, with Guyana’s Vice President, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, now a president of many portfolios. This is my position. Take it, live with it. Or leave it.

GHK Lall

Brother Jagdeo’s personal life is his business, despite his elevation in Guyana’s political hierarchy. Actions relative to sugar and hotel and bridge, and more, are dumped into the dungeons of non-consideration. Buried! It is how remote and immaterial such are today, notwithstanding continuums. What he does, doesn’t do, in other spheres of current national activities are what attracts interest, public comment, and fair comment published. Such is my right. It will not be relinquished. Period. Regardless of slings and arrows, including poisoned ones.

It is the sanctified right of all to free and fair comment, the products of unpaid, uninfluenced independent thought; it is the inviolable right of others to take objection. All I ask is that truth and what is best for the poor, hurting, strugglingGuyanese take the highest priority. The principled, not the partisan, is what should be paramount.

What is the composite that Dr. Jagdeo projects today? VP Jagdeo is the man overseeing the money (sorry Ashni). VP Jagdeo masterminds Local Government. VP Jagdeo is president, except for the official title (as a courtesy to His Excellency). I jettison ‘de facto’ qualifier, given the sweep, sprawl, and commanding power of this brother. Most of all, VP Jagdeo stands over Guyana’s oil wealth; and because it represents so much, I articulate, ventilate.

I laud illustrious Guyanese with PhDs, JDs, MDs, DDs, who believe that it is their patriotic duty to run interference for VP Jagdeo, as a matter of partisan or tribal honor. I also pity them. I don’t know what they say or write, or care what offense is taken at what I table publicly. It seems, however, there is this fascination, distinctiveaddiction, with what I present to contemporaries, engrave for posterity. That, too, is their sacred right; am comfortable not reciprocating. It means that writings hit the right notes, sensitive tissues. With seasoned editors. With readers. And other notes with those disagreeing.

I inform the latter: when VP Jagdeo makes distortions and fabrications less his favorite first friends, less his chronic, compulsive characteristics, then matters could be seen their way. It would be inhuman of me to ask that he banishes distortions andfabrications completely; just not possible. But honestly try he must,though that adverb may be alien to his life. This is what is required for this incomparable oil endowment of Guyana.This is where I stand with this oil warrior for Exxon and America. Which Guyanese is so low, so lacking in personal honor, to stand in opposition? VP Jagdeo can be abusive to Guyanese; yet he grovels submissively before exploiters. He can be aggressive with locals, but so passive under the heel of foreigners. Today, he is more Routledge than Routledge. Imagine if he says: ‘Guyana cannot, will not, go on like this. I speak for the Guyanese people, and this is trash, is trashed.’ Respect follows. I proceed.

Neither sugar nor rice nor gold is it. Therefore, only the most careful, conscientious, and completely clean husbandry will possibly suffice to give all Guyanese a taste of what it means to be the richest people on earth. When VP Jagdeo does the right things, then Guyanese don’t live with paper proofs of richness; they live with the unchallengeable power, purity, of their reality.

I identify parallels to deliver messages today. The Americans used LFS Burnham to cripple, then condemn, Dr. CB Jagan to grimmest wilderness. Endless dirges of Greek tragedies, Guyana-style, sounded. National disaster is neither play nor the pantomimes of pretenders on public platforms. But of real people, and we should have learned that the clever and treacherous Greeks of today are my fellow Americans. Just look at us, Guyanese.

Without invitation, without regard for personal principle (even appearance), there are the PhDs, JDs, and others who shamelessly prostrate learning, their pride in motherland, under the boot of self-enrichers. Brown nosing is us. Burnham was about lusty ambition. What are today’s Burnhams on the PPP side (ironically) about? Cult leadership? Love of money? Racial inferiority complex? Cultural bondage? Again, that too is their choice and their right. But, please, I plead, do not ask those of me; do not even attempt to place those dunce caps on this head.

When VP Jagdeo is about the immaculacy of leadership stewardship with the oil gift of the Guyanese people, then he is more than brother, he is best friend. I will be his first applauder, resolute defender. Since he has been reduced to obfuscations, contortions, and innovations reeking of palpable disingenuousness, then it would be an insult to intelligence and ancestors, to partner with rank injustices. Exclude me from patentedself-enriching American manufactures with the oil of the impoverished hopefuls, the nectar of what should be their destiny. One last thing: writings are a free service to all Guyanese, including denouncers.Do what is right, VP Jagdeo -prove me wrong.

(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.)