An open accounting, a public appeal to Bharrat Jagdeo

Apr 08, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News- This rises above an open letter to a national leader.  Today, I pen a public appeal to a brother, Bharrat Jagdeo.  The titles that he has held, the ones he holds now, plus the honours, I momentarily hold them to the side.  Mr. Jagdeo speaks of hate, who are haters, who is hateful.  To the PPP.  He means himself.

Clearly, a clever schemer of peerless proportions is on the march.  He is a victim.  Fouled and besmirched.  In this thankless quest, this gift from me to him, I exhort him to join me in the self-examination.  Of himself.  Of his public life, and what it has done to the simple and naive.  Via what has been the result in this agitated environment.

My brother Bharrat, when a man lives in darkness, and that is all that he has known, prospered from, then there is no light in him.  He knows what is said about the relationship between light and truth. When one is dim, the other suffers; when one is suppressed, then the twin gasps for breath.  Light and truth, think of that, Bharrat.  Then, there is that other consideration, association.  When a man, a leader, a public authority, has no love in him, it is then that hate, the hateful, and who he declares to be hateful encircles him, takes control of him.  When a loveless life is lived, what is left, if not poison?  So, he claims to see hate and haters and the hateful in others.  The clever schemer, the victim pretender, is what the diplomatic corps, the crowd of foreigners, observes in him, chuckles over their cocktails and dinners. They can be mirthful, for they are the beneficiaries of his practices, timeworn and meritless.

Without a doubt, there are haters and the hate-filled.  He knows who they are, just as well as I do. Jagdeo knows well who they are not, even better than I do.  The brave daughters of Guyana (Bulkan, Deane-Hughes, Janki, Radzik [two of them], White, and others) struggle for access to information, for the truths relative to the business of Guyanese.  The big business involving big money and the potentially big dangers that could devastate communities, even destroy the fabric of this country.  When women fight for relief, due to legitimate fears over safety, that’s not hate, Mr. Bharrat.  That is care. About country.  About people.  The poor and powerless.  The frightened and the frail of spirit.  If advocacy for those segments of Guyanese society embodies hate, then Bharrat Jagdeo has fallen so low and so hard that he is beyond salvaging.  Not for a man who delights at engaging in the savaging. Consider.

It calls for an extraordinarily cruel man to take advantage of simple folks, trusting people, worried citizens.  You are that man, brother Jagdeo, and that hurts me to say, but I must, because it is built on the truths of circumstances.  You are that leader who knows the weaknesses of Guyanese tribes, so you play to those.  I promised that this will be person-to-person, and from that I will not shrink.  I say what I think.  You tell listeners about hate and haters, who are hateful and filled with hate for the PPP, which means what it means, subject to one interpretation only.  When Guyanese who don’t care about money and prominence, or prestige and being near to you, Bharrat, ask and ask repeatedly about business documents, about the management of their wealth, and about prudence with their inheritance, who would be so vile, could be so scheming, as to categorize such efforts as that of haters and the hateful? The pity of it all is that hate is all that Jagdeo has mostly known.  So, that hate is what has twisted you, driven you, my fellow human being into this snarling, quarrelsome, infantile presence.  Harsh words, but I must say what I think, what I assess, what I believe of my own accord.

For my fellow Guyanese of every stripe and standing, I have one question.  Who has been quickest with the libel weapon, the State ad weapon?  There is one more: who have been the worst of the worst, with the slander weapon in their futile attempts at assassination from the shadows?  Bharrat knows who they are, cherish them.  I say that they know who to trust for their protection.  Who is the real hater now, when this is the reality of Guyana, as enormously possible from one Bharrat Jagdeo?  Slander to silence; smear to scare away from pursuing truths that Jagdeo fears.  The schools that Bharrat went to are unknown to me, untouched too.  When a leader stands by, I think approvingly, while his companions revile, the hate of exposure spills out of his own ears, perfumes his pores.  When my friend, my comrade, my neighbor, is about such hatefulness, then as a leader, as a man, there will be distancing from him or her.  There will be condemning and discarding of them.  Not for the show of it, but for the seriousness with which such wrongdoings are abhorred.  Bharrat Jagdeo has been how he has been: a man so consumed by his hates that he has allowed them to command his very existence.

Stand against his failures and farces, stand for truth and facts, and stand for a little light, and he distorts that into hate.  The clever schemer exhibiting how much of a tricky operator he can be.  Why not give the other way a try, my brother?  Let a little love in your heart, Bharrat.  Let some clean light grace your existence.  Let quiet light replace questionable, sketchy political truths, banish the hates that torment your soul.  When Bharrat Jagdeo talks about hate, I behold a man to be pitied.  One who endeavors to transfer his farces, his guilt, to others.  There is a better way, brother Bharrat, and it is not one that makes the unhappy and disillusioned of Guyana see the world like the Ancient Mariner.  Against them.  Shaking their spirit.  Face the light, speak to truth, and both will set you free.  Take it from me, they do.

For even when there is real, deep hate, the majesty of honesty and integrity is victorious.  No need to resort to rants and spurious schemes.  All of that has been overcome.  All the power, all the money, in the world doesn’t matter.  Find some peace inside, Bharrat Jagdeo, my brother.  Leave self-love alone. Be about genuine love and care, and when those are present, there will be no space in your heart for hate, or to see that revulsion, that evil in others.  Try it.  Start today.  Be well.  My gift to thee, brother Bharrat.

 

(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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