Thursday pompousness now stir one Monday anxiousness

Aug 21, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – For years, every Thursday afternoon without fail, Guyana’s Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo was the picture and sound of pomposity and bellicosity taken to their farthest extremes. Here was a man, a leader, who had declared war on Guyanese. Now the same vice chief, once the prince of Thursday afternoon pomposity is now ravaged by all-day Monday anxiety. All of his wretched and wasted Thursdays now climax to one day of reckoning, a Monday in September. He chews on his lips, he chews on his fingernails, he would chew on his toes, except that the energy and dexterity required are beyond his ability.

For those interested in observing firsthand a scaremonger in action, Guyana’s vice chief was the man to be with on a Thursday afternoon. It was all-day matinee, with rumormongering and sleaze-mongering building up the bill. Oh, he was king of a small anthill, with sludge spread liberally, and little of substance coming from a character straight out of science fiction literature. One who was once the national leader. He was a big, bad man then, and when Guyanese thought that he couldn’t (no one could) deteriorate more dangerously, he did. Now, Monday, September 1st hangs like an albatross around his neck. All of his Thursday afternoons bombast now the ballast used by wags and serious folks to poke holes into his farces.

The biggest one is that a man has a darling that costs all of US$2 billion plus, and ask him a straight question about that Wales gas-to-energy beauty, and the vice chief transforms into the equivalent of a hostile, volatile domestic abuser. I would be the proudest man around to show that US$2 billion trophy not just to every local; I would go global. No one could have stopped me from talking about and highlighting that multibillion-dollar American baby. What more will he tell the voters between now and Monday, September 1st?

The day I arrived on Wall Street almost 40 years ago, I heard about Black Thursday, lived through it. Then, later there was Black Monday, followed by Black Tuesday. Then I came back to Guyana, and its dearly beloved vice chieftain, and it rained Black Thursdays, with the master manufacturer going full blast. His furnace never ran out of fire, the smoke from which always polluted. He and the PPP have so little to show that Azruddin Mohamed is now their show. America has him in its sights. Venezuela has vile uses for him. Guyana and the PPP have no use for the likes of him, no space for his kind. One PPP minister mentioned something about “in a box” as a good resting place for the WIN contender. And, as for the vice president, each time that he hears the name Mohamed, he breaks out in a pox. From pomposity to anxiety. From a former president’s bombast to who gives a rat’s brass? The elections environment indicates that Guyanese voters are so sick and tired of the PPP that they don’t give a damn about American sanctions and any PPP Government fostered Venezuelan connection for Mohamed.

Local voter reality has gone past what the PPP has done for Guyanese in the last five years. The fate of the PPP is what it has done to once naïve, gullible, and hopeful Guyanese. It is of how the PPP took the trust of the people and fashioned a noose around the necks of Guyanese and lynched them. Another big reality is how Jagdeo’s Thursday afternoon daycare has been swamped by his 24/7 Mohamed nightmare. The man who believed that he inspired fear is now himself wracked by fear. The leader who always thrived on sleaze is now choking on his own mountain of sleaze. It is circle theorem trapping a deserving politician in an iron grip. All that worked for him so well for him so long because his own people trusted him blindly that the PPP vice chief came to believe that he is invincible, could get away with anything. Any cheap insult. One low dirt ball after another hurled at citizens. No mas; and he knows it, feels cold fingers on his neck; hears voices in his head.

In public, the bluffer talks of an outright victory. In private, his bright lights vanish and the past five years are his haunting company. A man haunted by his own spirit. His own record sticks to him like an unwanted shadow, one that’s unshakeable. It is a savage irony: a big man cut down to size by a l’il bhai, reduced to blubbering about American sanctions and Venezuelan puppet. If after five years that’s all that the vice chief has, then what does he really have, if anything. From Thursday afternoons to the first Monday in September, a man looks at that long, last walk.

(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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• anxiousness, Bharrat Jagdeo, GHK Lall, pompousness

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