Trust- who, Jagdeo? Why trust any of them?

Apr 01, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall 

Kaieteur News- PPP General Secretary Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo gets better by the day.  It is my joy to say that today.  What an extraordinarily dedicated leader he is, that he leaves the honeypots of GT and travels to the barren outlands of Babu Jaan to honour Dr. Cheddi Jagan?  One doctor remembering another doctor, a real one.  GS Jagdeo went to the heart of the gathering.  Elections.

It is seizing the moment.  I recall a man trying to interest me in life insurance in a New York Funeral Home.  It was on the day of my mother’s departure from this earthly vale.  Time and place, all wrong; bordering on the blasphemous.  Likewise, there was the GS with his foaming red tide of raucousness: Elections.  He was just warming up, for then Dr. Jagdeo trotted out a strange, dangerous trump card.  He spoke of trust.  Trust him- may I ask, the man must be joking, right?  Relative to elections, three other questions become one.  Trust -who to trust, why trust one party more than the other, why trust at all?  It is where my brother Jagdeo and I part company.  May it not be a parting of Cain and Abel.

Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo uses the word trust.  Straight up, flush in the face:  Give me something to grasp, some little something to vest my trust in with his PPP as government, as ruling party.  I lower the bar.  Just as a clean, pristine political party.  I lower the standards for Dr. Jagdeo specifically.  From his record- former Minister, former Head-of-State, the current 2^nd Vice President, and present national leader without compare- my plea, my position cannot be simpler.  Give me something to trust in thee, my brother.  I regret immensely that when I seek the thinnest morsel of trust from him, to detect it in him, there is nothing. Nothing to invest precious trust in him.  Empty-handed, I am.  Some said he is out to lunch.  Others say that he is over his head relative to trust.  Still others note that whenever the issue of trust comes up, Dr. Jagdeo usually loses his focus, his footing (and his memory).  The brackets are used for emphasis, to highlight his grave shortcomings in the department of trust.

Dr. J waxed dazzlingly and at length about the failures, hence untrustworthiness, of the PNC.  Man, that was such a low standard that it dies prematurely.  Because, let this be said clearly and sharply, the Opposition has not manifested why it should be trusted any more than Jagdeo’s tricky PPP.  Don’t tell the African man, Indian man, and Indigenous man about it afterwards.  Tell them by showing them that the PNC (or AFC) can go up in the face of Exxon’s commanders here (and in Texas), and say this is what Guyanese must have, or else….  It must be said now, not what is promised to be done a year from now, and then within the first 100 days.  That’s 100 years into the unknown and the untrusted.

Mr. (sorry, Dr.) Jagdeo had himself promised, committed, swore, about what he was going to do with that goddamned oil contract- that infernal beast freed from the gates of hell to devour the dreams of my people, fellow Guyanese.  My people, ah, Dr. Jagdeo, I could be a competitor.  GS Jagdeo took an oath before all Guyanese and said trust me, I will fix the Exxon contract, I will be about honest governance, I will be about clean leadership.  Well, my fellow Guyanese (and my fellow Americans and Europeans [pardon the latter]), what did Jagdeo deliver on those three counts?  What is tricky, or what is trustworthy?  Indeed, trust has gone underground, shoved there as though it is some incestuous secret to be kept away from Guyanese.

When Dr. Jagdeo delivers on his commitments, he would be the first man I would trust.  Because he has fouled his own chances of embodying trust at some minimal level, any level, then he amounts to the last man in Guyana that I would trust.  In the world even, since Donny Trump, Benny Netanyahu, and Nari Modi are ahead of him.  The only one that Bharrat Jagdeo emerges in front of, where trust is concerned, is Nicholas Maduro.  Jagdeo has had his opportunities to prove how much he can and must be trusted, and look what he did.  Permit me to share a few: IDPADA-G farce and calumny; Wales gas-to-energy secrecy; reality and diminishment of the presidency; Thursday afternoon assaults and batteries (elsewhere, those would qualify as felonies); Exxon’s tax receipts.  Whither trust then, VP Jagdeo?  How can anyone be so reckless as to trust?

I want to trust former Head-of-State, Jagdeo.  The others across the political spectrum also.  Give me something, the tangible, the valuable that not one can challenge or deny.  This is not about who to trust more.  It is about who to trust at all.  I could be a believer in and supporter of Bharrat Jagdeo, the leader.  The man must first manifest what is trustworthy.  Not even totally, for I will take marginally.  How I see it, call it.

(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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