Prez must not be a gangsta rapper, VP a street scrapper 

Apr 30, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – President Mohamed Irfaan Ali harbors ideas in his head that he is bigger than Big E. Small.  What prized ambition!  But Guyana cannot afford the luxurious image of its head of state comporting himself like a gangsta rapper.  A burly, blustery, dusky one.

‘You want to see this government fail?  Is that what yu’all want?  Well, it is not going to fail, it is not going to fail.’  Words to that effect on, believe it or not, blackouts.  If President Ali were an ordinary John Doe, I believe that he would be dismissed with the wave of a hand, a subject of mirth.  I don’t know of any Guyanese possessing of a sound mind that would desire a situation where the government fails and blackouts triumph.  Clearly, President Ali has an attitude crisis.  An arrogance listing.  An anger problem.  And, as I believe, a memory deficit, when it is convenient.  The PPP Government is one that does not like to be questioned, cornered, exposed.  It would kill to shut citizens up.  From the mists of local memory, I excavate Courtney Crum-Ewing.  He questioned.  He objected.  He pointed.  He went.  I invite the Hon. Attorney General, Mohabir Anil Nandlall, to weigh in with one of his dissertations.  The same courtesy is extended to the Hon. Vice President, Bhar-rat Jagdeo.  Talk as long as is wished.  But let this register powerfully: truth is a slippery beast.  It can be made into the shaky, sloppy, and sleazy in the hands of those who urinate on its altar.  Hope that I have made myself clear, gentlemen and beloved brethren.

I appeal to President Ali and VP Barry: calm down.  Stabilize self.  Secure spirits.  Inquisitive Guyanese aren’t enemies.  Leading a nation is not acting up or putting on airs in a society salon.  Or, more accurately, brawling in a bar.  There is too much leadership megalomania and schizophrenia in this neighborhood.  A president’s role is to set an example for his people.  If he is aggressive and acrimonious, then citizens have a role model to copy.  It is why the Guyana Police Force has its hands full with viciousness on the roads and appalling violence here, there, and everywhere.  That is, when the hands of many of its members are not full of paper stuff.  Those with signatures imprinted on embossed paper.  Do we (I) want to see the police fall apart and fall flat?  I trust that the president understands.

I humbly recommend that President Ali halts his splayfooted, barreling stride.  What he is doing doesn’t win anything or anyone.  It drives a wedge into the heart of Guyana.  One Guyana relentlessly transforms into one ugly, raging, tragic Guyana.  When their own people listen to the president and the vice president, they are not deceived by the histrionics that are seen as escape mechanisms.  The people want more.  More quality from their leaders, and less hostility, vulgarity.  The president is not Tupac, nor can the vice president continue doing his imitations of General Halftrack.  As always, I try to help the man with the shiny helmet: check with Admiral Alistair Routledge for the kind of leader that General Halftrack was.  Is this what Guyanese have for national leaders in this its golden age of oil?  Sergeant Bilko?  Those who fancy themselves to be Guyanese versions of Douglas MacArthur but are closer to Benedict Arnold.  Sergeant Bilko was always selling what he didn’t have and some noble feature of himself which did not exist.

When the two leaders that I have repeatedly referred to in this offering are more of the worst of Jamaican dancehall lyrics, they look bad, make Guyana look bad, and make me look bad.  The rest of Guyana may not care.  I do.  President Ali and VP Jaggy are always defending by attacking.  Defending some darkness.  Attacking and assaulting some truth that refuses to retreat, be conquered.  Talk to the teachers; don’t torture the court system.  Tone down the grandstanding and showboating, Guyana is not the NBA, or NHL.  Refrain from getting ideas to terrorize the Fourth Estate with the might of the First Estate.  Recall what happened to Louis XVI in France in the throes of the French Revolution.  I appreciate that these two great Guyanese’s education and exposure have not been about the finer and wiser things in life.  But that doesn’t let me off the hook from working tirelessly (and thanklessly) to set them on the straight path.  This is the sacred obligation of every Guyanese; since most shrink from doing their duty, or have been bought over, then it is left to the few like me.

The president knows this, which is why he and the other fella scheme endlessly on how to steamroll the handful daring to raise their hand and ask: why is that so?  How can that be right?  And the really adventurous with a huge appetite for risk: what about leadership shrinkages?  I table this my way: what about glaring leadership weaknesses before Exxon?  What about obvious leadership trickiness in Parliament, and cooperative tender board personnel arrangements, and deformed and demented checks and balances, a la PAC? The exalted and extraordinary ones in Guyana are free to speak, operate, and live like gangsta rappers.  The inevitable result is a gangsta citizenry and a gangsta country.  So long.

(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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• ambition, Big E. Small, blustery, gangsta, scrapper

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