Leadership: the kind Guyanese need now 

Feb 20, 2024 News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – I am easing up ever so slightly on prior insistence on this country’s urgent need for transformational leadership.  The same goes for ethical and moral leadership that are both entwined in what has been labeled the transformational that Guyanese need, more often crave.  Guyanese need a totally different kind of leadership now, at this point in its existence.  Guyana and Guyanese need a nationalist leader.

My definition of a nationalist leader is one who puts the people and their interests foremost.  Nothing comes close. Nothing. Not power.  Not money.  Not a pat on the head from Excellency Nicole D. Theriot (good boy), nor being made an Exxon hero by Alistair Routledge. No such hollow prominence or prestige matters.  Personal honor is webbed in being the best that a nationalist leader can offer.  This country has oil.  Just stop in stride for a second. Examine how it has transformed President Ali and former president Jagdeo. They open their mouths, and it is Exxon, Exxon, Exxon.  Its profitability next (returns), its shareholders in warm embrace (confident).

If anybody hears Guyanese interests featuring there, please share.  Far from featuring, the interests of the Guyanese people cannot even compete for a toehold in the priorities of His Excellency Ali, and his former excellency Barry J.  This is how much the oil, and doing their best to please their new kith and kin, Messrs. Darren Woods and Alistair Routledge, has transformed Ali and Jagdeo.  As they go, the rest of the cabinet and government fall in line and follow the leaders.  Things are so transformational locally that the senior most leader is content to play second fiddle to the straw boss.

There are no fancy concepts here, no attempt at sophisticated reasoning, pounding arguments.  I point to the best evidence available: reality in Guyana’s leadership ranks, and the stultifying outcomes for citizens of this country. Reality is the gun that smokes.  The President tries futilely through his overuse of transparent platitudes and bombastic postures to persuade Guyanese that he is on their side, has their backs with this oil.  How, sir?  When, skipper? In what manner, commander?  Fearing the formidable presence of superpower Exxon does nothing for Guyanese, other than neutralize their hopes. Presidents are not elected to please foreign investors. Work with them, yes; drive a tough bargain with them, and extract a fair price from, yes.  But presidents are not put into office to prostrate themselves to every artifice and caprice of foreign exploiters, and then turn around and put a spin and sheen to sell the pathetic leadership yielding to Guyanese. If and when any Guyana has heard President Ali speak with the authority becoming of a nationalist leader in that Guyana will not be cheated, nor will he allow the swindling of the people’s birthright (by anybody), I would like to know.  All that has been heard and seen are these fawning, kowtowing, groveling practices that reveal how much oil and Exxon (and America) have been transformational where Guyanese leadership is concerned.

Excellency Jagdeo has deteriorated into a muckraker, rumormonger and dirty tricks player for Exxon.  His transformation is so complete and pronounced that he is more for the investment community, and American capitalist interests than the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times combined.  When Guyanese need Bhaar-raat Jagdeo to transform into a true nationalist leader due to the significance of the people’s inheritance, he has transformed into a one-man multinational all by himself.

To be a genuine nationalist leader with staying power is a difficult consideration at any time.  To project the instincts and impulses of a serious nationalist leader where there is oil calls for the best in courage, the kind of impassioned convictions that generate their own unmoving will.  The people (my people) must get, must benefit, must ascend. Look at Barry J today: his people are Exxon’s people.  His visions are how to align smoothly and seamlessly with Exxon’s visions.  His practices are not about what personifies the grit of a nationalist leader, but of what feeds into, boosts, and is now inseparable from Exxon’s ambitions and calculations. When Jagdeo should be bold and bulletproof himself in what inspires Guyanese, his preference is for the bawdy and the boisterous.  His record is of an uncontrollable intolerance of dissent, sheer resistance to reasoning on what stands the Guyanese people in good stead. His ongoing clashing with economic logic and oil justice renders the man immeasurably inferior to the challenges of the era, and unfit for holding any office in any democracy, no matter how halting.  He has declared himself a willing party to capitalism’s (Exxon’s) dehumanization of ‘cullud’ people.  Here is a leader that is a man with a pool hall cast of mind, and a surrounding pool hall cast of clientele.  Brandish a cue stick and beat the few Guyanese who call for a nationalist leader into silence.

In the final stanza, Guyanese need a nationalist leader now, as in immediately.  There is willingness to cut he or she some little occasional slack on the ethical and moral.  If that is part of the price that Guyanese have to pay, then it is worth a try.  President Ali and co-president Jagdeo are too far gone to reincarnate themselves into nationalist leaders.  Aubrey Norton could have been, but has passed.  The search continues.

 

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• Alistair Routledge, d kin, Darren Woods, Guyanese, Messrsm, Personal honor

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