Truth, candor, honesty, integrity need not fear nor flinch

Jul 14, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

---

Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – Truth has no exit strategy.  PPP, PNC, or me, it doesn’t matter.  Why should it when there is nothing to challenge it, no one who can gain any upper hand against it.  There I stand.  Honesty need not cower, has its own language, stands on its own strength.  Candor is not something which should be bartered, not for money, not for political favours, not for spurious recognition and meaningless accolades from both hypocrites and shallow minded fiends.  Say what must be said, and let integrity take it from there, echo with its own unchallengeable, infallible resonance.  I try to live by these standards, be about these attitudes and attributes.  Sometimes I falter, slip a stride or two, but regrouping and resurging follows from there. Onward and upward!

If I were to be any other way, besides truth at my best and candor regardless of who is involved, then I am not worthy to occupy this or any space.  For then what would I be?  More importantly, who would I be and how can I face myself in the mirror, represent something different before my peers (unethical ones), and live with myself?  When honesty is sparse and a matter of tricky political convenience, there is no difference between me and those brothers, contemporaries, who fill many public spaces.  And when integrity is for prostitution before the highest bidder and the cheapest, dirtiest solicitor, then there is no place lower, nothing left but for me to go.  Not just to pasture, but to somewhere beyond this pale.

Taking all the above under my wing, it is why an endorsement could have been made of PPP Minister of Health, Dr. Frank Anthony’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout, and being among the earliest in line.  This is despite the fact that the political opposition had its own ideas of what should be.  Others may have cared enough to follow that line, but damned if that road would be traveled.  PPP Minister of Social Protection Dr. Vindya Persaud did some positives with her portfolio, and honesty and integrity would not allow anything but a public bow to spirited efforts.  Of course, the opposite has come in for its share of caustic comment in the public domain.  Minister Persaud has been taken to task on more than one occasion with what I label old age pension book distribution weaknesses.  When there is good, we must hail it, regardless of source; when the less than good is the experience, then there is a different treatment for such developments.  One more should ram the points I am putting before my fellow Guyanese.  When the young and callow President Dr. Irfaan Ali waxed brightly at his inauguration about “transparency and accountability” I not only gave him the space to deliver on his attestation.  I heralded and haloed him.  To my utter disgust, President Ali has since waned on delivering even the most limited representation of “transparency and accountability.”  There has been applause and there has been acid, where PPP luminaries have been the men and women under the spotlight.  Fair play and reasonableness demanded both sides of that coin.

Relative to the PNC and more recently the AFC, praise and punches have been similarly applied.  It was that outstanding PPP figure, the Hon. Attorney General Anil Nandlall, who noted something in the National Assembly of the Guyanese people.  It was that ‘one GHK Lall had lashed his own PNC.’  A man bashing and thrashing his own because they deserved it.  It was one of the occasions on which the erudite Mr. Nandlall had it right and said it right.  So did PPP runners-up Joe Hamilton and Deodat Indar.  The record should be in the Hansard, once it has not been gamed.  A man cannot ask for better testimonials from those who have tried their best at other times to bring the same man (me) down with fake news and other slanders.  To be fair and accurate, their Central Executive Committee members did the dirty work.  The work goes on, and I thank them all from Bharrat Jagdeo to his closely held army of willing foot soldiers, and dirty tricks operators, for making me better.  They must remember this little standard: there are some who are happy to be found worthy in adversity.  Guess who numbers among those?

With all this as context, there is no hesitation, no difficulty, in informing Bharrat Jagdeo, or Aubrey Norton, or Nigel Hughes, when and where they are going wrong.  The same goes for the US Ambassador and Exxon’s headman in Guyana.  They have their priorities; I have what means the most to me: the welfare of Guyanese.  From the Guyanese just named, (and the Yanks also) I expect, I hope, that they reciprocate the favour in my direction.  If we can’t speak to truth when our own are involved, then when can we?  If I shrink from standing for principle when my brothers, sisters, and leaders have erred, of what use am I do them?  Or to myself, might be the more pertinent question.  Even if there is not a single taker in Guyana, then I just have to tighten the belt, lace shoes closer, and travel alone.  Maybe, just maybe, a standard could be set, a humble example left, for those who come after to me. Who knows, Guyana could be a better place, with at least a different kind of fraternity in these public spaces.

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

---

• candor, GHK Lall, honesty, integrity, truth

---