Jagdeo and who is stupid

May 20, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall

Kaieteur News- It is a distressing thing to watch a man try to hold on to his sanity, and despite his best efforts, note how it slips away from him.  It is more than distressing.  It is frightening.  But this is what is happening in full public view with one Bharat Jagdeo.  Remember him, he was a head of state, once upon a time, and what a time it was.

He recently lost his head and branded some Guyanese “stupid.”  I go down on my knees and ask upstairs: whatever I do, don’t let me go down the road that this leader, this brother, took.  It is now coming back to tear him to pieces.  He would pull his hair out of his head, if there were any to pull.  So, he does the next most pleasing thing: he pulls some Guyanese down into the gutter that he had custom made for himself.  There he languishes.  There he longs for company.  He scavenged around, and came up with something to slam many Guyanese -“stupid.”  It does say a lot about the state of the man Jagdeo.  The state of his mind and decline, and the grimness of his fall.

Week after week, he hurled verbal grenades at the enemies he imagined.  Guyanese citizens.  Not a Thursday passed, without him rummaging through his reservoir of spite, his tank of poison, to deliver the radioactive into the local environment.  Mainly law-abiding citizens of this tormented Republic were his primary targets.  From a commander-in-chief to abuser-in-chief is a long way to drop, a hard place to arrive.  He thought that it was strength at its best, when he was at his reviling best.  Now, like that Roman dictator of old, Julius Caesar, Bharat Jagdeo crossed his own Rubicon.  A man at war with the Guyanese people, especially those who stand in his way, raise conscientious objections.

Whatever happened to agree to disagree?  And then with each going his way, and both much better for the exercise, the learning experience.  But that is not, has never been, can ever be, Dr. Jagdeo’s way.  His is the worst diagnosis imaginable.  He can’t help himself. He is too far gone to turn back now, and even if he tried, he couldn’t.  He isn’t.  To affix the mark of “stupid” on a multitude of Guyanese is not of a man into self-enhancement, but of one trying out new missiles to determine how much deterrence he can introduce, how many casualties he can cause.

For sure, Mr. Jagdeo is a believer in freedom of choice and freedom of association.  But with one condition: he must be the choice, only with him must be association.  Guyanese may not know it, or want to accept it, but that is Jagdeo’s own self-authored constitution.  It applies to the fiends that he calls friends (with one eye constantly studying them), and to any Guyanese that he declares to be a foe.  Whether they deserve that distinction or not, doesn’t matter in the vice president’s book.  It is a fat book, one that is thick with the names of his specially identified enemies.  It puzzles that a man who is a national leader thinks that he can succeed with so much bitterness, so many malignancies, surging through him, taking full control of him. Truly, this is beyond my education and my comprehension.  I don’t follow anybody, have a poor carpenter’s son as my role model, but that is good enough to earn people like me the title of “stupid.”

Like I said, when the sands of sanity slip out of a man’s grasp, then what is left if not sanity.  It is not stupidity, only the uncontrollable imbecility generated by raw insanity.  There may be the occasional short circuits and power surges, but never blackouts.  This has nothing to do with the GPL.  It is the living hell that Dante Alighieri mapped out for Vice President Bharat Jagdeo, and in which he now resides like some caged creature.  So, he snarls menacingly, howls feverishly, drives himself over the edge of insanity, as he rails and rages against the iron bars that now encircle his tormented existence.  I feel for this man.  I warned him: be sensible, be humble.  The gods harbor a special dislike for the haughty.  What did I get for my troubles – an extraordinary strain of “stupid” from his bosom henchmen.

Still, I cannot bring myself to kick a man in the groin when he is down.  Or any other place, no matter how much he has earned that scornful expression of utter contempt.  For the pathetic state to which he has brought himself.  When a man’s life is lived within a maze of entanglements, then the more he tries to untangle himself, the more he chokes on his breath, from his own futile efforts.  It is the height of self-destruction, that graceless state from which something like “stupid” could merge.  In England they had Bethlehem, from which bedlam was spawned.  In Guyana there is this dear son of the soil, Bharat, and pandemonium is now the order of the day.  It is a terrible thing to watch a man go to waste, and by excruciating inches.  Some caring soul should do a pooja for Jagdeo.  I will stand the cost of it.  It is the least that I can do for a brother in the severest distress.

^{(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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