The Prize, that extraordinary one 

Oct 28, 2024 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

---

Kaieteur News – There is regard for His Excellency, Dr. Ali.  It is preferable that Guyanese avoid pressing to know what kind of regard is harbored for the president.  A page would have to be taken from Vice President Jagdeo’s book: asked and answered before.  Or, as is more often his practice, that’s kan-fid-en-shal.  Even on such a delicate subject as one’s regard for Excellency Ali, the last thing wished for is to sound like, be like, Barry Jagdeo.  Better dead than that dread, a mind made of lead.  What is testing my regard for President Ali is this quiet association, this undercover effort, to lobby on his behalf for a recognition that is not due by any stretch of intellect, imagination, or fairness.

Neither belonging nor deserving.  But the push is on, and the president’s brain trust went far and deep: the familiar ground of Africa.  Those who were helpful before with a boost for fixing education along a certain trajectory, now leading the charge in trying to influence decision-makers in Stockholm, Sweden.  As part of the cobwebs, the Nobel Peace Prize is the mission underway for the man.  President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali and the Nobel Peace Prize should not be in the same sentence, nary a conversation.  Any such pairing would yield a monstrosity.

Let me be straight.  At such time that Excellency Ali has earned the distinctive honor of being considered for the more-often-than-not prestigious Nobel Peace Prize, the drive to make that a reality would begin right here.  Excellency Ali should never be about collecting charity.  Or what is orchestrated, forced; a fierce marketing push (the African running to the rescue again).  He certainly has his uses.  If it is not higher learning, it is the highest recognition.  I need an agent of that caliber.  Because the Nobel Peace Prize is the gold medal of gold medals.  Platinum, I would declare, without fear of what any man would say.  But marketing to be the winner is tantamount to prostituting self to own the Miss Universe Crown.

The Americans and European already look down their noses at people like President Ali and the other fellas.  If anybody wishes to challenge me on that one, there is the most persuasive of answers from the most powerful of sources.  Gaza.  Palestine.  Barbarisms.  If any Guyanese, PPP or PNC (AFC also) wishes more details, they know where to find.  The point made unflinchingly and unswervingly is that Gazans could be Guyanese other than for geography.

Or Guyana turn out to be Gaza, should there be different ideas about that crude commodity under the seabed.  With that as real history in real-time, why try to coerce that rarest of encomia and attract still more scornful condescension?  Let me polish the crystal again: Guyana’s president (MY president, [whether I have any regard for him or not]) should let anything that is due to him come to him and not be close to any chasing after any honor.  My position was made clear before: Abdullah and Reza and the others did not go proselytizing their oil, the world came begging before them.  If the indulgence may be allowed, Mohamed did not go to the mountain, the mountain came to Mohamed.  There is total confidence that Guyana’s Mohamed Ali knows that but has still reduced himself to doing the opposite.

Having said this, which is most likely like rain in the remotest desert-unseen, unknown, unaccepted-the odds are heavily in favor of Guyana’s Excellency Ali to snare the big prize.  His selling group is doing plenty heavy lifting (lobbying), while operating under deep cover.  It helps to some extent.  But there is the history of the Nobel peace Prize itself.  It has had its high summits, then there has been the ugly and the unfathomable.  The Red Cross, Quakers, and the UN Refugees group are outstanding examples of the right call.  At the human level, Albert Schweitzer and Ralphe Bunche and Martin Luther King meet the high watermark.  But Henry Kissinger and Menachem Begin, to name only two?  How could those two ever be considered for anything spelt p-e-a-c-e?  The partisan crowd and the paid PPP drummers may contend that if Yasser Arafat could, why Mohamed Irfaan shouldn’t?

If a man without a country could, there is this man Mohamed Ali with all this light, sweet commodity who should.  There is not much that could be said when such logic reigns supreme.  And when it is cheap to the point of being free, then there should be only one contender for the Nobel Peace Prize: Mohamed Irfaan Ali.  A stray thought intruded, then refused to go away: what about that other chap?  Nicholas Maduro?  He should feature, too.  Ralph Gonsalves could collect Maduro’s half and keep it, since he also has a strong claim.  The St Vincentian, that is.

In thinking of all this, I came up with this as a solid departure point: Chinese food.  Say that again: yes, Chinese food of all things.   Often when I see those glossy menus with their colorful fare, the urge is to eat the paper, there and then, cardboard and all.  Just as often when the food arrives, there is the aftermath and what death feels like.  The lesson: it is not the product, my fellow Guyanese.  It is the presentation.  Over to the man from Africa.  PhDs do have their uses, open doors.  Even those in Stockholm, Sweden.

---

• Association, Miss Universe Crown, PNC, PPP, President Ali, Ralph Gonsalves

---