Jagdeo risks deserving ridicule

Jul 31, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – What policies, and which minister, Mr. Jagdeo, when they are barely allowed to speak, usually have little to offer, because those reside with the chief national policymaker for everything? When Jagdeo makes these pronouncements in public, the first reaction is that he is working hard to be the premier national joker. Unfortunately, it is worse than that, for when he engages in these hollow, childish public exercises, he makes himself into a running national joke.

In the latest creative spin from the mind of the chief policymaker, ministers must be, “out there for the people who are listening to defend their policies and to speak about their policies.” Was Jagdeo being facetious, or being the narcissist that he is, he failed to see the contradiction between the promptings of his words and the strength of his own actions. Since his return to power in 2020, ministers have been reduced to nothing but messenger boys and errand girls. Yet he is pushing them to advocate what they may know nothing about, or about which they seriously disagree. Jagdeo has hogged policy, basks in the limelight, but still pushes ministers to take a stand on their policies. Is Bharrat Jagdeo a chief policymaker or the chief prevaricator in Guyana? More in keeping with today’s realities, is this leader a former president, or is he some cheap circus performer? We tell Jagdeo what his people should tell him, but cringe from doing: he is running stale, he registers as a big empty barrel, everybody sees through him, no matter how much noise he makes.

Jagdeo can no longer help himself, settle for saying his piece and holding to a safe line. He had to dive deeper into the traps he continually sets for others and ensnare himself further: “I assume that we want to be available to everyone and we have nothing to fear about our policies. We believe that if you cannot defend the policies, then you shouldn’t be implementing them.” Now he is slick enough in public to make it appear as though he is giving ministers a choice. There are reports of ministers being shouted down in cabinet meetings, either to muzzle them or introduce every manner of insecurity in them. They go along with Jagdeo’s policies or get out, but he is enough of a hypocrite and slippery worker to say that they have a choice: “shouldn’t be implementing them”, if they cannot defend them. Of all people, the chief policymaker has the audacity to assert that “we have nothing to fear about our policies….” Isn’t this the same man, the oil czar, the policy kingpin, whose tongue is tied on most matters that have something to do with the nation’s oil wealth? Isn’t the now fearless Jagdeo who is stricken by some paralyzing fear the same person who refuses to release billions in oil expenses, who delays and delays the publication of oil audit findings?

Further, Jagdeo has made it his standing policy to camouflage his fears by lashing out at any Guyanese who criticizes his policies. Jagdeo is the one who tries futilely to hide his fears about renegotiation pressures exploding, so he hides new oil discovery amounts. Jagdeo is so frightened about the holes in his latest dark masterpiece, the Wales Gas-to-Energy project that he buries pertinent details. He is calling on ministers to do what he shrinks from doing. Jagdeo has nothing about boldness or brawn about him. He is just a bluffer and a bragger.

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childish public exercises, hollow, limelight, National, policymaker

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