Profiles in Leadership – VP Jagdeo

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

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall 

Kaieteur News – It is Bharrat Jagdeo’s turn to be profiled.  He fits every CIA profile.  A national leader fooling himself into thinking he is the smartest man in the room (possibly universe).  Now he runs out of moon, day stand in front ah hee.  It’s a grim one; one long overdue.  As with Aubrey Norton, there’s regard for Bharrat Jagdeo.  The difference is in how I react to a scorpion.  If anyone wanted a picture painted in red, I just did.

From State Planning man to Moneyman to headman and now to another caricature of headman, Dr. Jagdeo has run the gamut, run his riots (aka rick-a-ticks, which reminds of rackets).  He loves the power of being a maximum leader.  When oil came, he became impotent.  Whatever the PNC failed at, he trebled.  When Exxon lifted one finger, Guyanese got one kick after another from their oil leader.  Local oil leadership 101, a primer for beginners.  He put himself near the oil money, then proudly told Exxon, Guyanese don’t need any.  Kind and caring, isn’t he!  Some kind of patriotic leader is this character, national leader, Jagdeo!  The fashionable phrase for that no mas dinero position taken with Exxon is sanctity of contract.  Sanctity of contract for Exxon is an economic obscenity for Guyanese.  I call it the work of commercial and political pornographers.

Jagdeo is a leader who gets things done.  Guyana Police Force demolished.  Guyana’s Environmental Protection Agency reduced to a dummy.  Guyana’s Access to Information office now a place of desolation.  Guyana’s judiciary is a work in progress -heading into the gutter.  Guyana’s state media reforged into a hatchet to decapitate objectionable citizens.  The rest of the press is the problem press.  Come September, the problem press could cease to be a problem, unless the distressed and disgruntled electorate register their distaste.

Dr. Jagdeo the leader claims to be a leading economist.  He went from being a socialist economist to a supply side one, a la Milton Freidman and Ronnie Reagan.  The Guyanese who used to be Russian in the genes is now more American than Donald Trump.  It should be obvious why Exxon’s Woods and Routledge love him like a pet poodle, one with whom they can canoodle.  Per Jagdeo, Guyanese will be in money heaven in 2027.  Should the Iranians go crazy and shut the Straits of Hormuz, oil prices will skyrocket, but who will have money in the pocket to buy?  Anything.  From anyone.  From anywhere.  Poor Guyanese were already fighting a losing war with cost-of-living, only for Trump and Netanyahu to deliver their death blows.  I warned all who would listen.  The Persians have a martyr’s complex about them.  My concern is that Bharrat Jagdeo left the Oil Fund low, and with demand for oil likely lower, Guyana’s people could sink the lowest.  Now OPEC is flooding the tankers.

Dr. Jagdeo as a leader is nothing if not uncanny.  Translation: tricky, slippery, rickety.  Whenever there is an issue with danger attached, the man has a nose longer than a giraffe’s neck.  He smells personal political danger that well, sends in his enslaved brigade to face the fire.  Bobby Gopinath (sorry, doctor) surfaced for the miraculous US$214 million reduction to US$3 million.  Alistair Routledge said he is a good Marine.  Khemraj Parsram stood by while Guyana’s EPA mutated into the Exxon Perversity Association.  John Hess said that is the best kind of governance.  Relative to Guyana’s most expensive project, the US$2 billion Wales Gas-to-GPL project, Jagdeo has poor Winston Brassington putting out PowerPoints that profane the mind and the environment.  One more for the road.  On the issue of Exxon’s US$10.4 billion half profit and Guyana’s US$2.6 billion (supposedly the other half) for 2024, the rest of Jagdeo’s lackey legion laid low, so that dead dog became the property of Vickram Bharrat’s ministry.  When a minister can turn his back on his portfolio, what is that: inspiring governance or a descent into ghastliness?  When Big Kahuna Jagdeo has to face front, he turns sideways.  When he should advance, he puts on his best running shoes to help him backpedal.

Using those live grenades only, is Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo a leader, a plotter, a collaborator, a manufacturer, a snake charmer, a quack doctor, or all six heroic figures under one potholed dome?  Jagdeo would do anything to be an American, even give up his crown jewels to make that come true.  When that proved out of reach, he remade himself into the next best thing: a Guyanese Benedict.  I understand Exxon is sponsoring him as an honorary citizen.  Proof of how much he surrendered, how he kowtows.  There’s a fly in the ointment: people in Washington don’t agree.  Their files provoke disbelief, anger, scorn, and calculations.  So, Guyana’s Jagdeo sits uneasily, a leader that’s a seller, prevaricator, long-distance runner.  He runs.  His shadows run alongside, condemn, haunt.  The electorate awaits.  Judgment Day, Jagdeo, has come to Guyana.

(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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• Bharrat Jagdeo, CIA profile, GHK Lall, leadership, PPP

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