Rejects and recycled

Jul 13, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – When I first heard that the PPP General Secretary, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo uttered the words “rejects and recycled” the initial reaction was that he was talking about himself.  He was not.  Realization came quickly that the good doctor was reaching into his political scrapbook to deliver a trouncing blow at an old and once fearsome political warhorse from the PNC, Mr. Aubrey Norton and a new and even more feared AFC leader who answers to the handle of C.A. Nigel Hughes, Esq.  There is nothing honorary about his academic parchment.  Still, Jagdeo is playing a game of boomerang with “rejects and recycled” for both of those words represent what could take off his head.  Being the savvy political animal that he is, Jagdeo realizes that the political tide has turned against him.  It originates from the formidable North face of the most demanding presence in this hemisphere.  But being Jagdeo, and despite knowing that “rejects and recycled” is part of his past and very much an integral aspect of his present, he still had to derogate political opponents, not caring that he showed how desperate he is.

I encourage my fellow Guyanese to walk with me just a few short years back.  It is not memory lane, it is Jagdeo’s lane.  There was May 2015, and as much as it was the rise of a onetime officer and gentleman named David Granger, it was also a rejection of Bharrat Jagdeo.  The reality is that Jagdeo had transformed his PPP Government into such a national monstrosity that he left the Americans no choice but to get rid of him.  Monstrosity was the word used by a top European diplomat during his time here.  It wasn’t the American, Excellency Brent Hardt, who had the rare fortune (or misfortune, depending on how others decide about these things) of being on the receiving end of a canine outburst in his official residence, believe it or not, and not from some inebriated PPP madmen, but two stone cold sober PPP women.  It was a series of developments of not so public vintage that marked Jagdeo, the real power behind the hobbled Donald Ramotar presidency, for that same label that he now affixes to political opponents that threaten his hold on power.  The last word is that Bharrat was the biggest reject in 2015.  The Americans had had enough of his guile and goofing off on the job, while making an infernal nuisance and embarrassment of himself.  His endless litany of postures and actions that couldn’t add up even in primary school math did him in and sent him into the political wilderness.  Based on the history of Guyana’s recent electoral politics, minus the last circus season, Jagdeo stands as a reject, and whether he looks left or right, he cannot get away from that political imprisonment record.  As usual, I should be remiss in my duty to an errant smaller brother if I do not set him straight: he should not be talking about rejects.  For when he points a finger at others, an excavator of his detritus is dug up and dumped on his increasingly creased skull.

On the issue of “recycled”, Dr. Jagdeo is wrong again.  If he were a real doctor, he would starve for lack of paying patients, so low would be his professional reputation.  Who is the best example in Guyana today of a political leader recalled from under his national tombstone and recycled into the national government of the Guyanese people?  It is not President Irfaan Ali.  It is not anybody but at first rejected Bharrat Jagdeo in 2015, and the now recycled Bharrat Jagdeo in 2020.  Like a lot of people, the Americans fell for his promises on the fullest freedom with Guyana’s massive oil wealth, and (this is the crucially determining factor) his sworn commitments to keep his recycled PPP squeaky clean on the corruption front.  Truth be told, apparently the recycled and reborn Jagdeo fell victim to a cold front, and it was not the COVID_19 virus (though the Americans [secretary Blinken] found ways to use that one against him).  The recycled Jagdeo was so stricken that he lost all his will and energy to run a clean ship and keep his own nose clean.  The Yankees were even kind enough to send him a news agency to alert him that he had to clean up his act and make good on his pre-2020 elections oaths.  But temptation is a hard weakness for many people to beat.  So, it is back to square one, with Jagdeo jumping the gun and trying to cover his once again exposed derriere by branding political arriviste Nigel Hughes and others as “rejects and recycled.’  I think that this time around, Jagdeo knows that it is more than his losing an election that is at stake.  He could be losing his freedom and all that he worked so hard for over the years.  I am not overly concerned about his leadership innovations, as the Americans have a fondness for individualism of a certain kind.  Just don’t let it be the kind that involves going back on word given and making damn fools of the white men and women on Duke Street and Foggy Bottom, Washington, DC.

Sad to say, Jagdeo may not know it, but he should have been a prophet.  Rejects and recycled once again points right at his profusely sweating head.  Uneasy is that now unsteady, anxiety-ridden crown.

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

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• C.A. Nigel Hughes, GHK Lall, hard truths, Mr. Aubrey Norton, PNC

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