Hey BJ what have you done lately for Guyanese bro?

Feb 05, 2024 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard truths….

Kaieteur News – A lot it turns out, Bharrat Jagdeo has done much for Guyanese recently.  He has given Guyanese insights, a whole encyclopedia full of them, about investors.  Guyanese now know more about foreign investors then they know about their own ancestry, thanks to the twisted so-called genius that is brother Bharrat Jagdeo.  Taak about smaat, dah banna smaat.

Jagdeo has now rebranded himself as an expert on investors.  He can walk and talk a mile an hour about investor psychology (they get skittish as kittens with one wrong word used).  Permit the first quick aside: a mile for brother Bharaaat does not follow a straight line, which is why he takes an entire hour: he has to concoct, he must reconstruct, to suit his own curvaceous realities. Jagdeo is waist deep into investor economics (they must get a return commensurate with their (you guessed it, investment).  Jagdeo is the best public relations officer for foreign investors: they do not take too kindly to hostile environments; they scoot at the first sound or scent of danger.  Jagdeo provides Guyanese with more than they need about the visions of foreign investors: grab as much as they can for themselves, give the local people as little as they can get away with.  Of course, slick Daktah Jagdeo-part bluffer and part cowardly bully-does not deliver his foreign investor symphony in those words.  Rather, he says this: Guyana is the place to invest, a welcoming haven for serious captains of commerce, fertile territory with all the elements for prosperity set in stone.

Translation: Guyana is up for sale. Come and get it, is the word, to those who are familiar with how the game is played, and who are the key local players to be taken care of, managed nicely from day one. Scratch a local mover and shaker’s back, and a full body massage is the reward.  In more understandable local terms: collect a plot of land (goldmine, real estate development), and give Guyana a piece of plantain.

Brother Jagdeo has told Guyanese everything that he believes that they should know, but about which they didn’t give a damn to ask for, and cared less to hear.  According to Jagdeo, foreign investor psychology is so fragile that they are ready to get their hat, grab their coat and go, like Sam Cook or Johnny Nash.  Investors like out of favor and now off-limits lovers, get suspicious and takeoff.  The curious thing in all of Jagdeo’s care and concern for foreign investors is that he doesn’t have the space or good sense to spare a thoughtful word for local owners about their national patrimony.  If any Guyanese hear the honorable Daktah Jagdeo saying a kind word (any single word) about the paramountcy and supremacy of the interests of Guyanese, and their psychology, then please do a favor and share it.

When it is the economics of foreign investors in Guyana that is on the table, Jagdeo gets even curiouser.  They must get their rich pickings now, while Guyanese have to wait their turn for what he calls ‘maximization of future revenues.’  Foreign investors are only pleased when they can consume big chunks of Guyana’s wealth now, but Jagdeo insisting to Guyanese that their time will come, but only if they bide their time.  How dumb and dotish (as a courtesy to present and prospective visiting British investors I substitute daft) does this leader of mysteries, secrecies, and sorceries believe that Guyanese are?  The foreigners come running here with both hands outstretched to latch onto the fruits of the hanging gardens of Guyana, the newest marvel of the world.  Meanwhile, brother Bharaaat (American phonetics) is telling Guyanese to count the fingers on both their hands for an idea of the years they have to wait for a taste of their wealth.  By the way, that is when he is able to squeeze in a thought and a word sideways for passive and naïve Guyanese.  He has two different clocks: one for foreign investors, the other for Guyanese.  As a second departure, I keep on addressing Jagdeo as a brother no matter how reprehensible he works at getting.  A few clear-headed and clean thinking Guyanese have expressed their impassioned objections.  The day that I drop brother when dealing with Bharaaat Jagdeo in public is that moment when I sink lower than him, when I associate with his kind of company.

Returning to Jagdeo and his troubling love affair with foreign investors, he has become a one-man lobbying machine for them.  Jagdeo has kicked aside Anil Nandlall and rewritten the laws on foreign investors.  Even further, Jagdeo has pushed aside not just Ashni Singh (a real doctor, but one prone to misdiagnosis and disqualifying himself), but also Chris Ram.  He now knows the accounting, economics, and high finance that are the secret concubines of investor highfliers more than the two of them together.

Most regrettably for Guyanese, as Jagdeo has morphed into a fundamentalist advocate for foreign investors, he has become the epitome of disinterest and sloppiness where the wellbeing and future of natives are concerned.  To foreign investors, Jagdeo is a hero.  Guyanese must decide what he is for them: hero or villain.  A leader for Guyanese; or a manipulator for investor prosperity.

(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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• Bharrat Jagdeo.  Taak about smaat, dah banna smaat, Guyana’s wealth, Guyanese

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