Risk-taking, per the president

Jul 27, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – ‘Put in money to make money.’  The gist of the president’s message on the need to take risks.  I humbly recommend that the president consults with Vice President Jagdeo the next time that he decides to flex his muscle to speak of which he is in the dark.  A man of darkness existing in darkness adding another layer of darkness in his wake.  Here is the gist of what Guyana’s head-of-state needs to wrap his head around: to put in money (invest) to make money (risk and return), one has to have money.  To be balanced in this effort to assist a leader lost at sea, he did have something going for him, when he took a plunge into the murky waters of risk-taking.  His address and audience were at the Ramada Princess Hotel.  Those folks have money, so the president was preaching to his richest constituency: the haves of Guyana.  They know how the system is aligned, how to work it, how to make it work for them.

The reality of oil-rich, and presidentially-inspired risk-taking is that 99% of Guyanese may never cross the threshold of the Ramada Princess Hotel, unless it was an all-expenses paid invitation.  Part of the tale of two Guyana(s) is because they couldn’t even partake of a lollipop there, unless it was a freebee.  No spare change, Mr. President.  The president may pretend not to know, but I do not give him ant passage to that escape route.  There are Guyanese, Dr. President, who cannot afford to buy basic food items.  When that it is so, as an ongoing condition under his leadership, and in the craze of a national oil age, where are those hand-to-mouth citizens (apologies) going to find the money to create wealth for themselves?  When a great many Guyanese struggle to buy sugar and salt, I would welcome the president and his people explaining how they are going to buy shares or some other unit of ownership interest in a business, any business.

Thus, this brings me to that difficult place: I am compelled to distance from the president, and disagree with him on risk-taking.  Though the president has accumulated a record of the disagreeable, I still toil to find ways of agreeing with him.  Neither much progress nor luck to report.  It could be that his head is hard, or I am the guilty party.  Look at the Guyanese who are involved in the leader’s risk-taking call.  The rich to get richer.  The poor have their own stock of riches: to be voters, which will send the president hustling around with a different kind of appeal.  Don’t take no risks!  Don’t split the vote.  Risk-taking or hairsplitting?  Risk-taking warned against via the guise of race pandering?

Now for two separate approaches relative to the same risk-taking that the leader touts.  I am all for risk-taking, having not done too shabbily in that culture and department.  But I believe in a level playing field, and also universal appeal, which cannot be said for what the president has put on the table.  Poor Guyanese have been further impoverished by the priorities of the excellent one and the honorable one (president and vice -president, respectively).  Yet, the president could say with a straight face to engage in risk-taking.  Perhaps, Mr. President, if Guyanese have some leftover discretionary money, they could then dabble in risk-taking in this plant and that venture.

Something is happening right before the eyes of Guyanese, rich and poor.  On each occasion that the president and his whole gang open their mouths, the evidence of how Guyana’s ship of state lists heavily to one side (the bright and enriched side), couldn’t be starker.  It’s a manifesto of the few prospering at the expense of the many, thanks to the wisdom and other attributes of men like the leading headman and the junior ones.  The president has a right to mislead himself that he has succeeded with his selling of risk-taking, through creating opportunity.  Risk-taking is a salesman’s pitch, and nothing else, that offers limited opportunities for a limited number of Guyanese.  Otherwise, it cannot be, since the vast majority of Guyanese can’t even get to the risk-taking starting gate.  The president can carry on with his charades, which is a poor disguise for what his likely objective is.  That is, building a separate Guyana consisting of an ultra-prosperous PPP aristocracy.  If that sounds eerily familiar, it is.  Think of his One Guyana song and dance.  For there it was at the Ramada Princess Hotel painted in red and draining the cream and chocolate out of the patrimony that belongs to all Guyanese.

Finally, the president is the best jockey for whipping risk-taking into life.  Review what his PPP Government has done with the Oil Fund and debt level.

(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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• GHK Lall, Guyana’s head-of-state, PPP Government, Risk-taking

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