H@rd Truths by GHK Lall – Sketches of Oil Leadership – Pres. Ali, a Profile in Fear, Frailty, and Froth

Aug 17, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – What has this national oil patrimony done to them?  I am speaking of the three top political leaders in Guyana, His Excellency, President Mohamed Irfaan Ali, Vice President and Oil Commissar, Bharrat Jagdeo, and Opposition Leader, Mr. Aubrey Norton.  In three public contributions, my humble offerings before all Guyanese, I sketch each leader and brother, and what the arrival and stupendous growth of oil has done to them.  This is articulated with malice towards none, and charity to all, including Americans.  Excellency Ali is first.

I once held hope that Excellency Ali would be a breakout president, conducting himself like the head of an oil State.  A true head of a true oil State; one that has the world hanging onto his every word, a world rushing to worship at his feet, like those three wise men with their precious gifts.  To say that disappointments choke and curl into a ball understates reality.  With oil’s might at his fingertips, Excellency Ali should have the majestic presence of William the Conqueror, yet his bearing and expressions are that of William the Silent, of a man who lives with the dread of dark secrets.  He looks over his shoulder in fear when he has all the armaments to convert him into the bravest, enough to make all fears beat a hasty retreat.

President Ali is comfortable going everywhere, and pronouncing about everything, save for one.  No oil! He waxes poetic about loans from oil collateral; but on oil itself he is pathetic.  It is not how a national leader with a PhD should be with the greatest national patrimony that Guyanese will ever see.  Which American, which white man, could back him into such corners that he, the President of Guyana-a country the envy, the glory, of the world-transforms into this weightless, wordless wonder?  About oil, of all things?  About its management and condition and disposition?  If the President of this hallowed Cooperative Republic of Guyana cannot speak freely with sparkling efficiency, with compelling astuteness, on what means so much to the people who put him on his lofty pedestal, then of what can he speak?

Belated appreciation emerges of the new interpretation that can be affixed to the new description, this new reality, of “Cooperative Republic.”  Thanks to President Ali, Guyana is now a cooperative oil republic mutated into a state of utter cowardice.  I envisioned a President Ali, after his fighting words when in Opposition, to lead the charge against the likes of Alistair Routledge, or any new viceroy Exxon dispatches here, to feast in this buzzards’ roost that is now Oil Guyana. Whenever oil is the subject, however, President Ali is a conspicuous disappearing act.

The President may fool himself, and all the president’s men join in the circus, that he is Akbar the Great, or Jehangir, when Guyanese live with an inglorious imitation of Baghdad Bob, and his blusters and pretenses at bravado.  It is history repeating itself: before maharajahs and nawabs rubbed shoulders with the British bulldog and emerged as whimpering pussycats.  Here, Americans replace British, with Guyana’s Nawab Ali as smiley emoji.  I think what this country needs most urgently is a refined version of Subhas Chandra Bose, but clearly that is not to be, as the entrails, livers, and frog’s feet indicate.  It would be interesting how the fancy pants Guyanese react to that last person named. Fact check: oil has produced more Guyanese turncoats and traitors than barrels coming out from below the sea daily.  I can’t wait for the new American Ambassador to get her hands greasy, for with a name like Nicole Theriot, she will make French fries out of Guyana, one leader, one Guyanese, one Yankee Company at a time.  Cajun cooking it will be.  Unfortunately, President Ali will be as he has been.  I should say blowhard, better is diehard for Exxon and America, and damn Guyanese.

Under President Ali’s watch, the damn Yankees keep coming.  This is Guyana, not Texas; but President Ali is all smiling, welcoming, hugging.  In this land of Lilliputians, President Ali is pleased to be hollow giant behind Alistair Routledge and Bharat Jagdeo. Another barbarity is that President Ali has presided over the arrival of all these swaggering Klansmen, who turn Guyana into Stone Mountain, Georgia, that revered outpost of bigots in white sheets and cone hats.  They burn their crosses on our backs; brand them across our foreheads, while Excellency Ali glistens with indifference, silence, impotence.  I imagine apoplexy in OP.

Separately, discernments solidify re: how the ICJ can be influenced, and neighbors to the north discover a different confluence of circumstances here, should American grily maneuver.  But I also know that life is not worth living under the enslaver’s boot, the piracies of predatory exploiters.  Guyana needs a president on a horseback with its oil wealth, not one riding pitifully and helplessly about town on some trick pony. Do this! Or be gone!  This is my birthright, and there will be no begging, no abject kowtowing.  Not to Exxon and Routledge.  Not to government, and not to Excellency Ali.  To both Exxon’s Routledge and Guyana’s Ali, I say: do right with this oil, and a champion may be born.

(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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• Frailty, GHK Lall, H@rd Truths, leadership, oil

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