Elections – the prospects – Part 1

Aug 03, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – And the winner is….  Big Bharrat said that it’s the PPP, can only be.  Up came Aubrey the outsider to say, not so fast, buster; don’t count out the PNC.  In the beginning, the AFC was still in the running, with many thinking that it would be doing something.  Time, often turns turtle.  For the moment, I leave out (respectfully) the other three in the September 1 GY Steeplechase.  There are still many hurdles to scale.  Credibility.  Yankees.  Prosperity.  Who has more to give?  Starting right now.  When looked at that way, the boys in red were ahead.

Since then, time tossed and turned.  For a long time, I thought that the PPP had victory in its back pocket, sure and secured.  Better that I stick to being a contributor, leave being a forecaster alone.  When Jagdeo and company are forced to run around the country like li’l bhais, shouting themselves hoarse, cussing out opponents left and right, the light dawned.  Something ain’t rite.  No! not the time to administer last rites to the PPP.  But Big Boss Bharrat has lost plenty weight.  He fights like a man whose past decisions and deeds have finally caught up with him.  Don’t count he and the PPP out.  Just don’t count them to be inside that circle and the top step.  Study the environment.

The PNC has surged.  Meanwhile, the Alliance for Change (AFC) abandoned its name: alliance and change.  It can’t form an alliance, and refuse to change.  When the PPP was at its weakest, parts of the opposition (frequently, the whole opposition) proved still weaker.  It was less contributory negligence, and more two other contributory factors.  Not tampering with oil, not upsetting the white kinfolk.  Family is family.  The other was that beast from the northeast that is like yeast.  American footprints ballooned before Guyanese eyes.  Hello, Mr. Marco; please to meetcha, Madame Ambassadah.  Because Jagdeo did anything and everything to greenlight, accelerate, and further rev American interests, American ambitions, and American visions, he had the inside track.  Dr. Bharrat did so much, so willingly, so cravenly for the Yanks, that he made me look like a blasted communist, a wicked subversive.  I draw a hard line at terrorist.

Then the PPP of Jagdeo and the other lovely fellow, the entertainer and wrestler, encountered two tsunamis.  No, not the PNC.  Wrong again, not the FBI, since those dogs have been called off, penned, muzzled.  The first whirlwind is from Lombard Street by way of somewhere on the East Bank Demerara, maybe even Essequibo.  A little reminder is timely for my fellow Guyanese.  In glorious London, Lombard Street is famed for finances.  Like the Mother Country, like the descendants.  There is symmetry.  Of money.  Of politics now dragged into the picture, which should remind everyone what the cat brought into the house.  Cripes!  Aargh!  It’s the universal story of politics, except that in Guyana, the epilogue and appendix are longer than the book itself.

Anybody seen Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo “Mr. Landslide Victory” recently?  My compliments to him, please; share the care of one brother to another.  A real one, not a political one, out to grab what can be had.  The things I do for Guyana, for the PPP, surprises even me, sometimes.  Say the name of the contender from nowhere, and PPP General Secretary, Jagdeo, relives his typewriting days.  Clack, clack.  Clickety, clackety.  He is one big frenzy.  What did he do, what record compiled, that drives him (and the wrestler) to those flights of froth and what he now holds out to the people as lifesaving broth?  Ah, the people!  Who are they, and where were they?  Who is their family, and what is their pedigree?

My fellow Guyanese (and Americans), this is where the rubber hits the road, and the stuff hits the ceiling, despite plastering the fan on its way.  Recall the two tsunamis.  The man from Lombard Street (or wherever) and the man-in-the-street.  The hard, gritty, streets of Guyana, with the women of Guyana wailing by the wayside.  All this oil and Guyanese can’t buy a mosquito coil.  Well, they shouldn’t be ungrateful, because Dr. Jagdeo and Dr. Routledge of Exxon-now the Exxon-Chevron axis of, of, ah, capitalist compassion-did handout cricket caps to shelter from the rains.  What more could Guyanese want, since Exxon (and Mr. Routledge) gave them free of charge the equivalent of the Roman’s panem et circenses (bread and circuses)?  Think of the millions spent by Exxon on cricket sponsorship.  No new taxes.  None certainly for Exxon, thanks to Boss Bharrat.  Somehow, Jagdeo’s Sicilian gambit has checkmated himself.  He is the leader who will be remembered as snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.  The other leader, the wrestler, is still out there doing what he does best, mudwrestling.  Part 2 coming up.

(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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• APNU, Elections, GHK Lall, PPP, Prospects, win

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