Pres. Ali on unity

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

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Hard Truths…

By GHK Lall

 Kaieteur News- “These elections must be marked by love, unity, strength of character, dignity….”  So said President Ali on Guyana’s 59^th Independence anniversary.  Giving courtesy where due, to the speechwriters that was well-worded.  To His Excellency, utterly lovely.  In normal times, words like those are a tonic to jaded spirits, those languishing in the dungeons of hope.  The windows are heavily tinted, and not a sliver of light is seen.  No light drains hope to nothing.  No confidence impales trust, buries it six feet under.

I thank the president for doing as he usually does: saying the right things, in just the right words.  Gratitude disappears thereafter; I point to President Ali’s hands.  Divisive, those have been.  Destructive, through vengeance of astounding callousness, deep indifference.  Though many a smear is painted across Pres. Ali’s record (his face, too), I am conscience-bound, duty-compelled, to identify what has been loveless, disunifying, of the weakest character, and the grossest indignities.  I don’t know about Irfaan Ali, the man, leader, speaker, promiser, late-developing-unifier, and whether his introspections dump tons of shame on him, but I am ashamed to name them.

Exhibit 1: The National Assembly has been about what desecrates every citizen, none more than those who support the PNC and AFC.  No Motion of substance allowed, the voice of almost half the electorate stifled into faint, strangled whimpers.  But Pres. Ali shrugs, speaks about “unity.”  Guyanese have a choice: profanity or hypocrisy.  Either way, the president’s half-decade history condemns him.  Unity must be more than a speech-of-the-day duty.  Unity is a way of life that must be struggled for, grasped by the fingertips, so tricky, slippery it has been.  Shutdown debate, Mr. President, and calls for unity get shot down.  Pres. Ali is the man behind the barrel.

Exhibit 2:  the International Decade of the People of African Descent -Guyana (IDPADA-G), and those behind it here have been subject to insult and injury, rank political calculation and ranker leadership devastations.  Yet Pres. Ali flares sharply with “unity.”  The degrading and denuding of IDPADA-G financially and viciously doesn’t foster unity, sir.  Such actions split Guyanese, segregate them into camps.  If one or two from the Afro community, Pres. Ali would still have a blot on his head.   People are not light switches, to be turned on and off in willing surrender to presidential rhetoric, commands.  He has more than a problem; he has a crisis bending his back.  President Ali has achieved self-savaging watermarks: low credibility, almost zero trust.  The more solemn his words, the more farcical he comes across.  A hollow man, one made of tin.

Exhibit 3: Village Councils in predominantly African Guyanese communities have been made into whipping posts, stripped of standing, neutraized.  Parliament is the widescreen replica of Village Councils.  How the word “democratic” still applies in the names of those African Guyanese entities is beyond my education.  Disrespecting the dignity and the will of African Guyanese in those politically castrated communities breeds barely concealed contempt in those victimised.  So, when the president sweetens himself with some curious brand of his kind of “unity”, he becomes the biggest mocker of himself.  The last thing that the demonised seek to hear about is “unity”, and the last man that African Guyanese wish to hear about “unity” from is Dr. Ali.  His own government’s actions has damned him.

Exhibit 4: There are those in the indigenous communities who have observed the president’s and his government’s love for dividing and weakening, using and kicking around.  President Ali can cry to his heart’s desire over the victims of the Mahdia Dorm fire, but the indigenous community know a crocodile when they see one.  So do other communities across Guyana, Mr. President.

Exhibit 5: Mocha is one, Linden another, and Chinese Landing one more.  These are a snapshot of poor communities sacrificed so that the obscenely rich could get still richer.  Unity, Mr. President?  Not when the noses of those dumped in the margins, left behind, have the door slammed in their faces.  Only a leader living in a fantasy world speaks of “unity.”  A truckload of sweet talk feeds sourness.  The president was tone deaf to the pain and anger of the afflicted, those pummeled by his government’s depraved decisions.  Today, when he cries for “unity”, he cries into the salted earth he has sown.  Guyanese people are now tone deaf.  Their body language says it all: go away with this unity talk, Mr. President.  Leave us alone, Dr. Ali.  Haven’t enough been done already, Excellency?  Unity, begone.  Start over.

I am sorry, Pres. Ali, but somebody must do the unwanted jobs around here.  It might as well be me.

(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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