The Blame Game – Jagdeo’s

Apr 17, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – Why are Guyanese looking at me? Don’t look at me. I can hear the man, the supreme policy man, the main “guvment maan”. Call him Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, Bharrat ‘Jumbotron’ Jagdeo. Jumbotron Jagdeo is his name and blame is his game. Shifting blame to others is a full-time occupation for the PPP Government mastermind. All the others revel in their mindlessness. Dodging his duty, recoiling from responsibility, hiding behind hedges, that is Jagdeo. He is an unending series of blame shifting, blame shoveling, blame allocating, blame denying. He is the man in charge of this today and that tomorrow, as assigned to himself, but all his self-appointments have neither duty nor answerability nor credibility. Take a look at this picture, and there is VP and CP Jagdeo in full cry week after week, press circus after press circus. The man is a zoo all by himself. Out of sheer courtesy, I replaced asylum with zoo.

GHK Lall

There is a set of weaknesses and built-in sicknesses at the GPL and Jagdeo lays the blame on the PNC. Tek dah bozos. He was not president for over a decade, and the PPP Government was still in the barren political desert those 23 years, and only now has the reins of power firmly in hand for the first time. Regarding the three years and eight months that the PPP has been in office this time around, those don’t count. Blackouts are still wholly and solely a product of the PNC wastages and rampages. This is how this man’s mind functions in a state of near perpetual blackout.

Then, the promising but hanging Wales gas-to-energy (GTE) project is now behind the clock. Who is to blame? The people identified to deliver this piece and that connection. Jagdeo blames a Guyanese firm for being late. Next up were the second phase people on the ground at Wales with the conversion facility. And there was Exxon. Delays. The blame game rolling along and rolling up anybody in the field of play. Except Jagdeo, of course. Where does this stop? Why the only policy left in Jagdeo’s head is to continue along the potholed pathway he loves so much. I am yet to come across in my long years a man who relishes the darkness as much as Jagdeo. Remember that I dealt with some really dark spirits in Lower Manhattan, but Jagdeo is the King of Grim. Blame, blame, blame. Blame the independent media. Blame the activist women who point to the gaps and concerns. Blame John Lall and Joe Lall. According to Jagdeo’s uniquely calibrated mind, the world of Guyana is against him, when all he is about is doing good.

Not satisfied with Guyanese, he throws in a handful of foreigners. In my thinking, Jagdeo is more than into the blame game. Jagdeo himself is a game. There are healthy games and there are dangerous ones. Guyanese get the joy of making their choice about which ones, the man in red who has lost his head, has made his bed and they stand him in good stead. To blame is to shame. Oneself. Blaming others is slipping out and skulking away and abandoning the bridge in the hour of distress. Here is one for Bharrat: forget Bulganin and Lavrenti Beria. Try the Bushido code. It will make a different kind of man out of thee, my son.

In characteristic fashion, I have some more free words of kind advice for Jumbotron Jagdeo: stop making a laughingstock of yourself, doing a lovely impression of the Three Stooges in one body. Recall how Larry used to be always blaming the other two and beating up on them. That is the essence of supreme leader and chief policymaker and champion blamer Jagdeo. Start fresh, bro. Get a clean piece of paper and sketch a self- portrait first. Begin there, point the first finger in that first direction, and positives will follow. Citizens respect a sincere man. People pardon a humble and genuine man. I have the highest regard for anyone who sucks it up and says unambiguously: I was wrong, I slipped, I erred. It is easy to throw rocks, put up blocks, against those perceived as enemies. It is the epitome of honour and honesty to admit to all citizens that the good hand being worked with is fractured.

When all the abusing and cursing and fevered attempts at suppressing are over, the buck stops on the desk of the former president who is still the first president. In deference to Excellency Ali, I prefer the subdued today. The buck (fullest responsibility) is on Jagdeo’s head, it is ingrained in his face, and must be what he accepts willingly. Don’t go the other way with the little boys and big shots unleashed to make a bad situation worse. If there is nothing to defend, then there is no need for either aggression or oppression or revulsions aimed at the conscientious saying one thing and one thing only. It is: give us something to support, something with the essence of truth, something without anything ducked or disguised.

Rather than blame being the game, it is infinitely better for leadership to resonate with ownership.

(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.)

GHK Lall, Government, hard truths, mindlessness, press

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