Soft questions for VP Jagdeo

Apr 10, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – It is the season of questions, and since I have an inquiring mind, the blasphemous is done.  I now place a little pamphlet of questions at the feet of His Excellency, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo.  I assure him and his coterie of loyalists that there are neither traps nor landmines nor surprises nor tricks nor anything untoward in these simple questions publicized.  They have to do with his management of the nation’s oil patrimony, his relationship with Exxon and others, and his familiarity with truth, and the oaths-unsworn or unwritten or unknown-of leaders.  The VP may take umbrage, but I can only be about uniformity of efforts to steer him to the paths that holds the most promise for Guyana.  The paths from which he dodges with awkward feet, which he seeks to obscure through clumsy camouflages that are transparent to everyone.  Truth be told, a red herring is a red herring, and so is a pink iguana.

First, sir, why do questions, the essence of the ordinary, about the people’s patrimony drive you to such fury?  I appreciate that the best defence is a hostile offense, but why the agitations that reveal so much that is now unanswerable about this oil?  Recently, some questions were raised before Mr. Routledge, but the first stop must be, no ifs, ands, or buts, with the chief policymaker.  Is the paramount policy to intimidate interrogators through pretending at frothing mob-like frenzy over straightforward inquiry?

As is my norm, a speck of advice is posted.  No matter how often a question has been tabled, a leader is a teacher, a policymaker is a messenger, an oil czar cannot afford to be this bizarre (answered before).  Another word for this errant comrade, if some of what has been asked pushed, pleaded for (transparency, fencing, leadership integrity and boldness) were implemented, questioners would run out of questions.  I would have to spend more time writing books than assisting to pull up socks.  They are not mine; for the record and to clear up any confusion about whose socks fall in disarray not just to their ankles, but to their shoe tips.  Jagdeo’s.

Second, why is it Mr. Vice President that there is this immovable devotion to placing Exxon’s interests above those of Guyanese?  Even the blind can see without a dog, or a hearing aid, and with astounding clarity what being puppet, pawn, and parrot to the decisions that benefit Exxon has inflicted on VP Jagdeo.  As a courtesy, I am leaving out the bristling, menacing porcupine that he can rapidly transform into, when oil and its possibilities for Guyanese (not Woods or Wirth) are on the agenda.  Why do foreign investors always take precedence, eminence, over local visions, considerations, expectations?  Regardless of all the calumny (justified I believe) that has been hurled, has nothing been learned from the lessons of egregious failures?  This oil is and can be the hour of personal redemption, so why not seize it and show the world what personal capabilities are?  No! I do not identify cunning, nor disgrace this writing (or the object of it) by having any truck with suspected weaknesses, or other labels alleged and affixed.

If those may have been present before, let them be the monopoly property of others now.  I think that it is well within the wisdom of Bhar-rat that there is heinous injustice in GY$25,000 per qualified, while Exxon’s people get a full, fun-filled ride on Guyanese backs.  Why do interest rates and expense billions have to be so, Dr. Policymaker?  Why do all policies have a golden Exxon sheen to them?  Why real audits are not the norm, so that Exxon is exposed as a snake in the grass?  Better make that inside the bra.

Not one of those questions is asked to embarrass the former president.  Every one of them is to help see himself through the eyes of distressed and disgruntled Guyanese, including many of his own people.  The ranks multiply of the ones no longer in that worshipful condition.  If the keen has noticed that I allocate several bites of the same apple, with three or four questions under a single umbrella heading, then I learn that from the best.  It is Bharrat Jagdeo himself; his present title provides official confirmation of and witness to his long, colorful history.  This naturally segues to the last question, and the underlying sub-inquiries related to it.

Third, there have been endless swirling speculations about Jagdeo’s familiarity with truth.  Is truth merely an abstraction, liege?  Is it seen as hindrance, nuisance, and inconvenience, master, something less on the totem pole?  As I have weighed this, there is this measured conclusion: Jagdeo has an identity crisis, one that is acute and chronic, in proximity to the pathological.  There is this mysterious difficulty with truth.  He huffs.  He puffs.  He comes up with stuff.  I have observed him sweating by the barrel, like a man afflicted with fevered hallucinations when oil truth is the mandate of the moment, must take primacy.  He has not been about what to do, but how to go about it like one of Edghill’s roundabouts.  There are strong truths and there are sly ones.  There are also sordid ones.  One of these days, long after me, there will be a Truth Commission.  A genuine one, not one of those local COI farces.  Somebody will recall that someone at some time said something about the truth, and Jagdeo’s haunted relationship with it.  This leader should have been good, he chose to be goring, graceless, and of ghastly grimness.  An answer or two should help to clean the air.

(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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• Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, GHK Lall, hard truths, His Excellency, unsworn

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