Jagdeo’s policymaking: a spotted zebra

Jul 17, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Yes, that’s right.  A spotted zebra, it is, and it is policymaking Bharrat Jagdeo style.  He should have been a tailor or a dancer, and though not either, he is very good at both.  How to make head or tails from the snakes and ladders policymaking standard of Jagdeo bhai is my challenge.  I think that in the next life, I am going to take up pole vaulting or bungee jumping instead of commentating on matters that are none of my business.  In keeping with the snake and ladder illustration, I roll the dice and hope for the best.

The big man’s main policy is to avoid talking about oil at all costs. If he has to shout at people who are part of his policy maneuvering, an extension of his crafty camouflaging. When shouting doesn’t work, then a good old-school dose of vitriol (“busing down and cussin down”) is just the tonic.  I think it is a healthy policy.  Why open one’s mouth and display the utter ignorance, confirming the lowest jokes of the wags waiting to pounce.  Why display a pair of gums and get on the bad side of Exxon?  Say as little as possible (that has been answered already, and I am a busy man).  Fair enough, but busy doing what, chief Jagdeo?  Whatever it is, it cannot be, has not been, about what is favorable to Guyana’s interests.  Thus, the chief policymaker’s standing mantra: keep lips zipped, and keep job.  It is a solid policy; self-serving, for sure, but it is oil management that is the subject under review.

When any Guyanese see the equivalent of what Friar Bharrat is doing with the nation’s oil wealth and calling it policymaking, there will be warm reception over here.  Half-assed answers, non-answers, apologies for answers, farces for answers, are not answers.  But these are what now make up the bulk of what the Vice President of Oil calls answers and the cornerstones of his oil policy articulations and positions.  It is tantamount to someone possessing the winning ticket in some big money sweepstakes or record-breaking Powerball prize and keeping it inside his pillow or in his shoe.  What good does that do for anyone?  The ticketholder and winner. The sponsoring company.  And the impatiently waiting army of family and long-lost friends.  Still, I am with the VP on this policy of silence and dissembling of his, for make a speech and before long the money is done and gone, and there is neither family nor friends lingering around.  Here is where I stand.  Oil policy built on fear can never be fair for the Guyanese people.  Fair for the PPP and Jagdeo’s hold on power, but never fair for local prosperity. The more that Jagdeo displays his fright, the less things are right for Guyanese.  That is not policy, it is life as based on reality.

Jagdeo gives away his hand when he slams his fists down on the conference table in public.  Procurement laws must not be broken by every Tom, Dick, and Harry, and anybody who violates standing procedures must have the book thrown at them.  It is Guyana’s chief policymaker at his loudest best, a figure of inspiration, a leader of vision, a man without consideration for condition or comrade.  As usual, it is my thankless job to take a big bucket of ice-cold water and throw it on both Jagdeo’s head and those products of his curiously misarranged mind.  First, the screaming, foot stamping, pretending at standards Jagdeo was the one from last month and last week.  This week is another story, and it is the real Jagdeo showing who he really is, and what he is all about.

Somebody said, here is a test case, Mr. Policymaker, and it is an open and shut case.  A billion dollars of tender board mistakes, a song and dance from the performing giraffe that answers to the name of Public Procurement Commission, and there is a batch of empty cells reserved for just such a development waiting at Lusignan and Mazaruni.  Whereas he was happy to create a scene about policy and procedural violations before with procurement, the best that he is capable of doing now is split the scene.  He splits hairs, he searches for ways to keep snowflakes frozen in the midday sun, and he huffs and puffs to make the haze from smoking guns die a quick death.  Here is my conclusion to all this confounded nonsense.  This is not a genuine policymaker in action.  It is Bharrat Jagdeo the rickety fabricator and prevaricator doing his danse macabre and making himself look and sound more bizarre by the moment.  One week he is about law and order; the next week he is about chaos and confusion.  Chief national policymaker or chief national performer and jester?

No honest Guyanese taxpayer wants to hear a word out of the big man from bamboozle city about who should have done what but didn’t.  Every citizen that has some principle about him or her is interested in one thing and one thing only: what is Guyana’s chief policymaker genuinely going to do to fix procurement frauds (and foreign oil tricks).  It all boils down to one dark but still brightly revealing place: say one thing and do another.  That is the best policy and if any Guyanese see any little honesty in that, then God bless.

(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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• business, Challenge, Chief, standard, zebra

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