Excellency Ali: the power and the powerlessness

Mar 29, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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H@rd Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – A friend sent me a short clip of President Ali being interviewed for the BBC’s Hard Talk program.  I was pleasantly astonished.  Then joylessness followed in short order.  For I saw the president rising to a high plateau, and almost immediately came the troubling reminders of how lifeless and lost he can be, has been.  I watched and listened to President, a rare activity for me, and I saw a leader flashing with fire, coming alive with energy, bristling with potency.  The first question asked of myself was simple: why not?  The second was, if then and there and about that, then how come….?  And the last was, the contradiction, why the ugliness of the contradiction?

Excellency Ai was asked of carbon emissions from Guyana, given this country’s rapid escalation of oil production and all that that holds for what is released into the atmosphere and environment.  Two billion tons is a staggering, devastating number.  Before the question could be completed, Guyana’s president leaned forward, index finger pointed, and almost rose out of his chair.  He was that energized, galvanized, electrified.  Pardon the redundancy (thrice), but I think it vital to relay the passion and conviction that came out of the eyes, the body language, and the very pores of Dr. Ali.  I will skip over the verbiage about vast forests preserved, carbon sink and carbon credits involved, and offset, and other elements, as they were all encapsulated in the president’s vibrant response.

Where some have opined that he was arrogant, I saw President Ali as assertive, and aggressively so.  Where some may see him as unmannerly, I observed Guyana’s head of state operating with a full head of steam, on fire for Guyana’s interests.  Where others are sure to conclude a man lacking in style, I beheld a national leader speaking with power and authority.  And I shall table, some strains of perspicacity.  Like I said, there was amazement at this startling incarnation of His Excellency, Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali, President of Guyana. It was a moment to savor. A lush sound for ears that have longed to hear similar vitality, identical compelling potency when dealing with other matters in the national portfolio of challenging issues.  The national portfolio is the presidential portfolio.  To my immense regret, it is now my compulsory duty to point to the blinding contradiction, the crippling weakness, and the alarming cowardice that have all come to characterise the attitudes, the approaches, and the actions of the same President Ali in managing the Exxon-Guyana relationship.

It is a relationship that beggars the imagination, that insults the intellect, so obscene it is.  It is a relationship prostituting its elfin the finest of glittering finery as a partnership.  A corporate-political one, that is; a multinational-national one, as hailed.  Like hell it is.  When the same presidential vigor displayed over carbon emissions for BBC viewers (and the world) is called for, with Exxon, Excellency Ali is reduced to whimpering in the manner of a cowed cur.  Why, sir?  When the same powerful presence of mind, and unsparing, even scorching, string of words and phrases are demanded (as for no other occasion), with the Exxon contract standing as the matter at hand, President Ali is the thinnest and palest of thin and pale shadows.  He is a nonstarter: invisible and inaudible, MIA and AWOL; the former is true to his name, while the latter fits nicely: a weight on this land.

When I cast about for the same formidable essence in President Mohamed Irfaan Ali, as manifested before the microphone and the videophone of the immaculate British Broadcasting Corporation, regarding the Exxon 2016 contract, the best that is encountered is an absence of strength, a paucity of courage, a lack of heart and guts, someone devoid of the family jewels below.  It is my grim duty to sum this up in the tersest manner: when the 2016 Exxon contract is what President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali must go to war for, even be willing to die for (politically or otherwise), he is a deserter.

Gone is the surety of stature, as shown to the BBC.  Running away is the shrinking, fearful condition that is presented to the new barbarians, Alistair the Hun and Darren, the one who has now risen to be the darling of the Westminster Dog Club and dog show set.  Again and again, I cry out in anguish.  Where is that Irfaan Ali, the man and the leader, that was so strong and unrelenting and in the face during the BBC Hard Talk interview?  Why is he content to be so piteously paralytic, so hideously gutless, when the 2016 Exxon contract is the subject?  What 2020 contract has Ali’s PPP negotiated for itself with Woods’ Exxon?  What price power?  What price is being paid by the Guyanese people for the contract worked out between the PPP and Exxon?  For access to power?  For retention of power?

When it is that most repugnant and lethal of legal and corporate instruments (a nuclear weapon, no less), the 2016 contract that is the issue, President Ali is not fighting off the BBC inquisitor, he is off to sea.  President Ali is less than a shadow, he is nonexistent.  The other president, as incredible as this sounds, is infinitely worse.  On this day of the greatest story ever told, and the greatest sacrifice ever made, it is the sickening duty of Guyanese to live with leaders who save their own skin, deal in their 30 pieces of worthless silver.

(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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• BBC’s Hard Talk program, GHK Lall, Guyana, H@rd Truths, immediately

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