H@rd Truths by GHK Lall – What is VP Jagdeo so mortally afraid of?

Sep 27, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo has made a living out of trying to drive fear into conscientious citizens of this country.  Instead of making fearful those who call him out on how he and his government manage matters, all the VP succeeds in doing is baring how mortally afraid he is.  He showed his hand too often and fired off his deceptive verbal salvos at the wrong people.  If he cares to pause and listen, a few citizens of this oil rich country (like me) place a high priority on the some of the very same things that he professes to be about.  My rage-inducing articulations have shown him not only where he is going wrong, but how he can do much right, and reap the leadership rewards.  It doesn’t include money for politicians.

What could ever be wrong with a Guyanese asking for an interest rate number that Exxon charges, brother Jagdeo?  I ask again: help us, so we can see what kind of partner we have: a gouger, or a helper?  How can it ever be upsetting when a citizen presses for disclosure of Exxon’s billions in expenses, Dr. VP?  I press once more, so that others can appreciate how Guyana is accurately billed, overbilled, misbilled, or should not be billed at all.  Stated differently, is Exxon to be trusted, or is it a corporate bill fabricator?  I refrain today from going into the rest, like taxes and so forth.

What I scratch my head over, instils with deep perplexity, is why the nervous desperation on the part of friar Jagdeo in his favored media trysts that result in media pornography?  Even secondhand they smell of what is of the underground, and underhanded.  The Vice President should be speaking with palpable strength and powerful persuasion on all things oil, and not engage in these subterfuges that are laced through and through with the low and the vile and the malicious.  Regarding why he thinks that there is a need for any of those, or such serves his interests, is beyond my comprehension.  He makes himself look cheap and cowardly with the personal attacks.  If that’s all that there is, then think again, bruddah….

I will say this one thing to all Guyana: Vice President (and former President) Jagdeo is not this weak, not this incompetent, not this insipid, and certainly not in any of the ways that he may attempt to convey, in his efforts to attract sympathy.  Deceptions fare poorly as distractions.  For there are these visible and yawning gaps in his husbandry of the nation’s oil wealth.  The man is more competent and creative and versatile than most in these parts.  So, to me, it is unfathomable, that he twists himself into corkscrews and bends backwards that leaves one impression only: an underling in service of America’s oil mammoth, Exxon. I am appalled to detect that the Chief Oil Minister of Guyana does not care at all about how his verbal contortions and other machinations make him look small, like a true circus performer.

There is awareness that writings more than mash corns, pierce nerves, and rattle PPP leadership cages.  Writings and sayings make people think, and there is that clear and present party danger to contemplate.  It is an existential one. Things are already razor thin, so the risks are tangible in how they threaten political continuity.

I ask again, though I know the answer: what is this fellow citizen, a top one, Bharrat Jagdeo, so mortally afraid of, where this oil is concerned, if he is doing right?  Why should he be anything but a skillful, resourceful warrior for Guyana, and not a slippery fighter taking aim at his own?  Especially those who seek to remove the scales from his eyes, those who bend their own backs to give him some stiff, unyielding back bone. I am not an enemy of anybody on anything, and this includes the Vice President, even more so now.  It is not part of my life’s work.  I did not return to Guyana for this; nor to make money from any type of public service.  Save the money reserved for witch hunts and hatchet men; the ground is barren.  And, of the hunters and diggers, some of them sleazy, I give a gift to the Vice President, compliments of a Spartan: de mortuis nil nisi bonum (of the dead speak no ill).  Regardless of what the henchmen in the Palace Guard do, they don’t exist for me -mentally dead, they all are.  I speak to, I deal directly with, the man that matters, VP Jagdeo, who assumes a cadaverous cast.

There is no need to resort to tricks; try the truth, the whole of it, and experience the delight.  It is not too late to make a fresh start.  This oil can and must be managed differently, which means better for Guyana.  Slow down some projects.  Test Exxon.  Most of all, test self.  Count on backing from this corner.  Fear signifies weakness; the more of it that is there, the more mortal dread is obvious.  Lashing out is a loser’s choice.  Be a winner, Dr. VP.  Show to all Guyana the tuff stuff that is inside.

(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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• baring, country, GHK Lal, H@rd Truths, leadership

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