President Ali: A caring profile

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

---

Kaieteur News – Mohamed Irfaan Ali is both warrior and unfortunately a wimp, when the occasion suits him.  In this kind and gentle profile of Guyana’s head of state, I emphasize how Excellency Ali is a sleeper on the job, while a man ever on the move.  The president is a contradiction: he is a hedger but convinces himself that he is heroic. He talks a good game with the naïve, but his game is shallow, and he has his fallback option: wrap himself in smoke. The facts and circumstances emphasize how President Ali has been. He likes being president. He doesn’t like the tougher duties that go with national leadership. OIL. Give Excellency Ali a shovel, a plane ticket, somebody to hug/kiss, and a cameraman nearby, and he is the man. Say oil, and he is MIA (no pun).

Guyana has soared into a universal symphony; a Number 1 hit worldwide.  OIL.  Where is President Ali on this? He is playing hooky (skulking from school): busy with smaller things when the major matters beg for his attention, intervention. When the president should be engaged, excited, effusive about oil, he has relinquished control of that to VP Jagdeo, who then lost control of himself. The oil is too vital to Guyana for the President to be occupied with duties more relevant to secondary portfolios. Time and priority management, master.  I assert that plans and visions associated with agriculture are best left to Zulfikar. He must be capable; check the high regard the party faithful has for him at the last PPP Congress. Therefore, matters involving blackeye peas, red peas and cassava are believed to be in competent hands.  Also, there are Education, Labour, and Local Government (city cleanups) ministers; they must pull their weight, deliver. I think that President Ali artfully dodges when he dives into the minutiae of comparatively smaller matters in Guyana. Perhaps, it is to distance himself from the oil portfolio, his version of denial, not-so-slick escapism. He cannot afford to continue doing so, not when Guyana’s leading oilman is falling apart, and everyone sees right through his antics and tantrums. They get worse with each new public appearance either a circus or a riotous affair. This oil means too much to leave any longer to a man who studied in a country where propaganda, suppression, and destabilizing are main courses. Show who is boss: reshuffle him.

President Ali is the president; I humbly remind him. He must act like one. I hear the president is well-diplomaed, he must live up to it. Prove by performing, sir. He must be more than a regular cabinet minister, more than a hopper, skipper, and a jumper all over in his now transparent efforts to evade the responsibility that the new and glittering oil era has placed on his head. It cannot bow now, ever. Avoidances only make matters worse, for there is the nation’s leading oilman making a mess of things.  On oil, President Ali must lead from the front with authority and zest.  Study the stuff.  Surround himself with people who are steeped in oil, and whose main staple is oil.  I urge Excellency Ali (respectfully, naturally) to stop his constant moving and pontificating and take stock of where Guyana is today. Oil is the economy.  Oil is the global conversation -Guyana’s cheap, high-quality crude is the destiny of Guyanese. When President Ali just must be up to his elbows and eyeballs in oil, in terms of cracking the whip on the Vice President and demonstrating very tangibly who is in charge, he prefers retreat, absenteeism, and being a shadow leader.  I invite any Guyanese to check how much of his time, how many of his words, how frequent his postures on oil in comparison to the rest of issues, in which he involves himself to slip past any serious dealing with it. Is it because he is fearful of confronting Exxon, wimping out before Woods and Routledge, when he has the strong hand that he does? Who wants this oil more?  Superpower or not, twist Exxon’s arm to renegotiate that foul-smelling contract, which Dr. Ali was all about when in opposition. A fair package is non-negotiable.

Contrastingly, President Ali is a tower of power when dealing with locals. He is brash, he is bold, he is bristling with either barely suppressed hostility or the pugnacity of a young Mike Tyson. That is, a man not to be tampered with, one who must have his way, and who will bulldoze his way over whoever stands in his way. Show the same energy on oil, it cannot be a one-man show (credible commission). The president cannot be a disconnected bystander; he must be bold, reset his vision, refurbish his reputation. There is too much hinging on oil; there is too much danger with oil and natural resources in general remaining under Jagdeo.   President Ali is in charge, and he can reshuffle and restrain, he can promote and demote, at will.

I gave President Ali a brace when he reacted like a tightly coiled spring into the face of a BBC man. On reflection, I asked myself whether that was not the classic symptom of someone abused in the home (party’s) who takes out his wrath on the unwary. The movements, the outcomes, his successes with oil will be the best reflection on his presidency. A quick note on other areas.  Perceptions and reports of corruption have plagued his reign.  Secrecy has overrun transparency.  And accountability has taken a back seat to the self-enrichment of selected few.  In each instance, President Ali doesn’t seem to care beyond the misplaced aggressiveness when reminded.  Blustering about these chronic failures, trying to intimidate and overrun those who point to farces and frauds have backfired.  Presently, President Ali’s legacy to history is sickly, sloppy. If he cares, I gave him a hand up on what he should make his priority.  Lead from the front.  Take charge of the oil treasure.  Behave like a president with genuine substance.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

---

• GHK Lall, Guyana, Mohamed Irfaan Ali, President, skulking

---