VP Jagdeo – a frank profile

Jun 09, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – Before Bharrat Jagdeo was a person, he was a political creature.  When he made strides in understanding politics, he stopped being a human being, and became a machine.  Cold and calculating as a cash register.  Bloodless and ruthless as any foreign barbarian.  But they tell me he is a people person.  Must be some special kind of people unknown to me.  I believe that Jagdeo has some residual good in him.  The handicap is that he himself would have the greatest difficulty finding such, if he did care to find some.  Guyanese love to showoff that they know a few profound truths.  One is about those whom the gods wish to destroy they make mad.  Guyanese don’t know zilch.  The gods have a more delightful pastime to keep them from getting bored.  They give them oil.  Jagdeo got his paws on oil, and it was the beginning of the end for him.

In opposition, he was going to do this and then that with the oil.  Then he fell flat on his behind, once in government, and his backbone collapsed.  Ever see a man go so fast from warrior to weasel?  There is the man in red and the brightest, hardworking head.  When he must tell Guyanese what he is doing for them, he tells them about what must be done for Exxon.  He thinks he is a mulatto, even some Viking warrior for the company’s cause.  The warmest welcome for investors, he calls it.  When Jagdeo blazed like a blast furnace for foreign investors, Guyana’s EPA went into deepfreeze.  Bewitched Guyanese stare at a corpse that embalmed itself.  The disemboweled EPA still stinks.  When pressed about the absence of a Petroleum Commission, the Mighty VP seh why the need for waan, when Guyanese already gat one.  It is he himself. Dozens of people in a cabinet and every maan jack of them don’t have a single pulse.  Objection, Comrade leader.  Overruled!  Now shut up and sit down, and let it be the last time.  Now that is leadership.

Like the Almighty Ali, the VP speaks thunderously and menacingly to poor, frikkened Guyanese.  But when it is the white man, they are all manners and mincing their words.  Yessir!   Right away sir!  No sir!  Not a word about renegotiation, sir.  Getting in the face, or crawling on the knees?  I am dumb, so Guyanese must tell me.  They tell me that Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo is a smart man, but with what and for what purpose, those are the questions.  They tell me that he is a leader of fire and brimstone, and I agree.  Just listen to one of what he calls his press conferences.  They are so adorable that they should be sent to the UN General Assembly for airing.  They need some excitement in that stuffy institution, an openmouthed peek at what the Jagdeo school of Guyanese leadership is all at the core.  On the other hand, when his audience consists of foreigners, Mistah Jagdeo is more about protocol than Buckingham Palace.  There is Mr. Hyde putting on his best face and pretending to be the polished and proper Dr. Jekyll.  I will take Dracula.  Incidentally, I can see the white people wrinkling their powdered noses at his airs, at this uppity n (now don’t get any ideas, folks).  N is for neophyte.  Nothing to do with nincompoop or that other nasty, ugly, and dirty word.  Take it from me, the Arabs felt that sting first.

See if these dentures fit.  Bharrat Jagdeo is such a wise fellow that it took him four years to hear and recognize the noises thundering globally about Guyana’s procurement malpractices.  Four years of record-breaking national budgets, where the hog of the billions went to, what else, procurement.  In 2024, it is GY$666 billion, in some shape or form.  In 2023, it was GY$387.8 big ones for capital expenditure, which was 50% over 2022, and about 275% over 2021.  Is that real money, or what?  Now, when all de money dun teef out and the toothless, cherry-picked procurement commission is exposed as a con game, there is Jagdeo riding into town on his white horse with his white hat firmly in place.  He has been around those cowboys and cowgirls from Texas too long.  Corruption has been killing Guyana from the day it stopped being British Guiana, but it has never been this bad.  Here is a thought for peers: the Americans love Guyana so much that they send their CIA, DEA, FBI, State Department and even the NYPD here.  Jeez! Thanks to Jagdeo’s style of clean governance, Georgetown has become Madison Square Garden.  Or is it that Cuban resort called Guantanamo that was so favored by the Yanks?  Now the word is about big plans for Parika.  The positive is that it could be the gateway for ecotourism.  The dark, unspoken side is that the modern Parika would be a paradise for smugglers, and it is not plucked chicken.  Everything about dese bannas gah fuh gat a hidden agenda.  The whole US National Security Council could suddenly develop a keen interest about vacationing in the new Parika area.

Many PPP stalwarts insist that the Bharrat Jagdeo of today is new and improved.  I will meet them halfway: new, I agree, but improved in what, may I ask?  In craftiness and camouflages, certainly.  And, upon second thoughts, what is claimed to be ‘new’ in Jagdeo is not really new.  Only a new coat of paint, thanks to the mushrooming American presence.  I caution my fellow Guyanese that I know these people well.  Give them as much freedom as Jagdeo has, and they could blow up this place.  No meters, no conservative production levels, no watchdogs, and no parent liability guarantee, and Guyana just joined the nuclear club. As jarring and juking and jiving as that was, I think that the old Jagdeo had a few droplets more to recommend.

Summing up all this, my thinking is that the honcho lost his way when he began to view truth as some kind of terrorist, and light as a blight.  I don’t believe that he can recover anymore.  Even he wanted to, his new American friends have some other ideas.  My God! Guyana is in a vise: all the vices congregate in that one locked place. One apple can spoil a whole barrel.  One black sheep can tarnish an entire family.  One maximum leader can bring down a country completely.

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• Bharrat Jagdeo, GHK Lall, Politics, profile, Viking

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