H@RD TRUTHS BY GHK LALL – President Ali needs to put houses in order

Dec 05, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

Kaieteur News – From what is making the rounds, I discern that His Excellency, President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali has some significant weight on his back, some serious housecleaning to contemplate. In fact, he would be wise to do more than recollect and reflect; it would be better if he were to act unselfishly and smartly. Some of what he should address with urgency has to do with himself, while the rest is inside the house over which he presides.

GHK LALL

Today the president holds himself out as a Muslim of noble callings. I applaud him for his public identification with one of the great faiths, pillars of belief ever known to man. Before he had some different spiritual ideas, and other inclinations. Those were the days of yore, now long overtaken by immersion in Middle Eastern exchanges. I am disappointed that there has not been more learning and application in the local domain, given how much that brotherhood knows about oil and foreign oil powers, and how much they had to endure. In my book, this would be an incomparable benefit to the people of Guyana, all of them and not just a segment, considering the handicaps under which this country labours in this 21^st century.

What was encountered in the sands of Arabia a hundred years ago under tents should not be the experience of the children of Guyana. Not in this day and age of human rights and the brotherhood of man, with no master race present in these politically correct times. Political democracy matters for naught when there isn’t economic democracy. For there is every indication of foreign supremacy in new clothing of those three bugbears(isms) that Dr. Cheddi Jagan used to have so much to say, most of it not pleasing to the ear.

Listen and absorb and learn from the Muslim brothers, Excellency. The other brotherhood may not be looked upon as kindly by current American friends in the domestic habitat. Should President take tutorials and pointers from his Arab and Muslim folk, he is sure to hear echoes of Malcolm X, and that one about “white devils” and what is neither kosher nor blue-eyed soulfulness.

As an aside, and as part of His Excellency’s makeover, I plead for him to think long and hard about his choice of garb at international gatherings. There are some thoughts, which ought to influence and guide his actions: (i) Guyana is a plural society, with multiple spiritual persuasions’ (ii) it does not sit well with many when the president is proud to be the manifestation of attire that is reflective of other societies and cultures, and (iii) when he is on official duty, which is all the time, he is representing all the Guyanese people, not one set. Though His Excellency cuts a remarkably contoured figure in his special threads, I urge pausing and rethinking.

In this same vein, and as President Ali knows more than I ever would, there are numerous anxieties in Freedom House about who is benefiting and who is not in the parceling out of juicy plums (contracts). Passions are ebbing and flowing with a Kashmiri pitch and strain. This is the bigger picture, and it is not in the president’s interests to pretend unfamiliarity or, worse, wave aside pent-up anger, and continue merrily along the same pathway. Come 2025, he could find himself a victim of passions that cannot be contained inside the party’s house, and which spillover to his loss. That is, loss of face, and loss of place.

But there is another house in which His Excellency looks at his absolute worst. In the noble house of the people, he oversees a hodgepodge of occupants that is a maze of mystery and madness. The President should be sufficiently schooled to know the sacred manner in which the Koran extols marriage. He has to decide what to do with what is before (around? under?) him in the second most vital house in this land. Unfortunately for President Ali, even dark shades during a dark night are not enough to obscure what is right in front of his eyes, and which the teachings that he now embraces consider to be less than holy.

Furthermore, in that same house, there are denizens that should remind him of why Lot had to take a hurried flight from Gomorrah. All the sacred texts counsel with the same voice: watch out for orphans, protect the younger ones. The president may turn his eye and fake chronic sinusitis, but the stench of such abominations wafts higher and wider. In a short sentence, this is the kettle in which President Ali finds himself roasting. And as if all of the above are not enough, there is a former president who runs amok, while making everyone in the government and party look like a mook, or a moron, plus fast hands and fast money in a Las Vegas style operating environment. Beware, Excellency!

For all these reasons Excellency Ali longevity is in jeopardy. He is under the eyes of the radar, and they are beady, as in unsparing. From all reports, he hangs in the balance. Of this, there is no exaggeration.

(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.)