H@rd Truths by GHK Lall – Donald Ramotar for President

Oct 19, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Report and rumors that former President Donald Ramotar is a spent force, yesterday’s news, are all exercises in the exaggerated, the wishful, and the convenient. No!  the Don is not dead, but very much alive and making noisy splashes.  My word to the former big chief is unambiguous: Run, Donald, Run.  Methinks that this is what it is going to be come 2025.  This is what the tealeaves, white fowls, and incense all reveal.

There it was: for the first time in a long time, I heard that label proudly resurrected: Jaganite.  Since there is no Irfaanite as yet, then the other main ingredient to that formula has to be Jagdeoite.  Jaganite is grassroot; Jagdeoite is the bitter root for the dreaded capitalists, imperialists, and colonists, who can be compressed into three pungent words: natural resources arsonists. So there is Mr. Ramotar coming into his own, and stating in the clearest terms where he stands.

First, it is about what should be done about the contract, what he would lead the way in doing, come hell or blackwater.  Blackwater does not only mean the streams and brooks common to Guyana, but the mercenaries based in North Carolina that Exxon brought in to mind its stores of Guyana’s wealth, which includes politicians, professionals, and potty panjandrums.  Buy the politicians and the people perish.  Time to change that mangling of the promise of Guyana, and if it means that things have to come to a showdown in PPP land, then Mr. Ramotar is ready to rock.

The second sound coming out of Mr. Ramotar was also as bludgeoning, in the face, and as final as renegotiation of the dastardly 2016 Exxon oil concoction.  It has to do with corruption, though the actual word was carefully managed.  According to the former head of state, an investment arm is needed to oversee what is really happening in the secretive, suspect, and now sinister world of contract awards.  Tenders are about what toys with and titillates and tortures Guyana.  Tender boards take Guyanese taxpayers for a ride, and then toss them overboard with cement shoes attached.  Just like the mafia does.  They call that governance in this part of the world.

If there is anyone in Guyana who should know about corruption, I nominate Donald Ramotar.  He has been near to it.  He knows the people in it.  He can smell the practice and the people in a hurricane even if he is running from an overflowing volcano.

Corruption is killing the PPP: it is so rampant that even PPP stalwarts are talking about it, retching over it.  How much swindled and to be….?  Ouch!  Big Brother Jagdeo knows this, but is helpless at arresting the spiral: monster spawned and let out of the bottle.  The people who should be active participants in any sharing of the fruits of their wealth are not.  They are struggling and they plan to be brutally sharp in their rejections in a year and change.  Dr. Jagdeo knows this, but he has no medicine to turn the tide.  The only remedy he has is to rail and rage at the few who tell him that his underwear has fallen off.  Or when it does stay in place, it is like Swiss cheese -holes all over.  The rats have had a wonderful time.  is de same ting about which Donald Ramotar come up wid de idea of a government investment arm.

In advanced bailiwicks, there are those and they work decently.  Polls eradicated from the nest. Anonymous reviewers.  New reviewers for different projects.  Good luck, Donnie, with that one, given the local culture, the local religion.  It is corruption and with due respect to whoever the so-called civics are, it is what neatly captures the ‘c’ in the PPPC.  The fact that Donald Ramotar calibrated events so political astutely conveys to me that a Ramotar run for the roses is on in 2025.  It was at the Red House with people in red shirts taking about identifying passionately with the ‘red’ man, the Marxist Jagan.  Better dead than red is now turned on its head.  Jagan lives on through the Jaganites.  Move over Burnhamites, and the Jagdeoites have their work cut out for them.  As for me, I am content with my role, which is to be a parasite committed to carrying the fight.

To choose the Red House as the venue for an unstated and unofficial launch of his 2025 run for the crown has its own built-in message coming from behind a line drawn in the sand in red (of course).  To say this more pointedly: Red House is not State House which is now Exxon House.  Look at them: President Ali has been bizarre when oil is the subject, and Vice President Jagdeo nothing short of the grotesque.  One tickles, the other tangles.  Now Donald Ramotar, like Ed Cid, is called out of retirement (and exile) to rescue the faltering troops and the fading hopes of Guyanese. My advice stands: run, Donny, run.  Frankly speaking, it is unimaginable that Mr. Ramotar could be worse than Drs. Ali and Jagdeo on oil and corruption.  And that is with the two of them latched together.

(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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• Donald Ramotar, former, GHK Lall, H@rd Truths, President

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