Pres. Ali: broken promises, discarded commitments

Aug 28, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Five years later. There is Irfaan Ali. How has he been? What has he done? Where is Guyana? Are Guyanese better today than yesterday, five moons ago? How to begin, and where? I start with the inauguration address, subsequent oaths, of President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali.

Transparency. Accountability. Unity. The man knows what to promise. He doesn’t know how to deliver. There’s public procurement, access to info, IDPADA-G. He knows he failed miserably; still, he shrinks in horror: can’t go there. Self-destructive, those would be to party, political fraternity, even he himself. So, he distanced from sworn word given. Should such a man, leader, be regarded?

I will walk with kings and then the poorest peasant. He did: fawningly before foreign powers; scandalously with the powerless in the domestic hearth. The powers paid homage; the powerless kicked like the cat that irritated. Pensioners, teachers, public workers. Recall the $60,000 per month private sector worker. A bright man promised to deliver them out of poverty in six months. A mother-to-be needs nine months for delivery. This superstar guaranteed the divine: 1 to 6 months. Hail! the replacement president.

Excellency Ali swore to “review and renegotiate” all contracts. Guyanese expected a warrior. They got a weakling (sanctity of contract). How not to admire a man who to save his own skin, sacrifices his own, through a tricky wordplay? More recently, an Oil Spill Bill that could potentially endanger, bankrupt, Guyana required his signature. Irfaan Ali signed, so that the PPP Government’s prime interest, protecting Exxon’s parent company is now law. Guyana’s law now insulates Exxon’s parent, thanks to Pres. Ali’s fear and lack of care. He bought himself another five years. Pres. Ali’s supreme test, challenge, choice was Exxon or Guyanese. He chose Exxon. Is this man Mohamed Irfaan Ali fit to be a president, or a man to be pilloried? I pity him. The PNC surrendered the money (contract); the PPP surrendered security (spill law). Bankruptcy’s nightmare hangs and haunts.

Want a house lot, a birth certificate, a referral, see Ali for delivery. Need the national-crime, oil, trustworthy leadership, clean governance transparency, and more-addressed and resolved, go to the US visa section in Kingston, and mention my name.

Listen first to this national leader, Irfaan Ali, who promises truth, decency, and integrity in government. Then peer behind the presidential façade, the promises, and there’s the dirty tricks supporting cast. A cabinet member waging dirty war on social media. Police covering up. An information office reduced to an almshouse. Procurement profaned to a prostitution racket, with buyers, sellers, insiders. Irfaan Ali is less a president; he is more of a parable gone wrong. References, comparisons to the PNC have no merit. PNC is the Stone Age of pre-oil; PPP is the glittering Age of Oil. With oil, Guyana shouldn’t be a banana republic. But even oil can’t help, when there are bananas in charge. One is terrible; two a tsunami. To make matters worse, Guyana has a leader, who prefers to be an entertainer, a circus performer. Praise and thanks.

President Ali has presided over budgets so big that Guyana is bursting. With corruption. With bloated bellies and hopeless eyes. For those desirous of studying how hopeless and hungry Guyanese are, absorb how they run, trip over themselves, stretch their hands for pension, a cash grant. Temporary reprieve for the impoverished in a country with trillions for Exxon, and trillions for budgets. I call this the terror of the Ali presidency.

The president can bluster and bristle. I see a sorry figure: a shell trapped in a shadow putting on a show. There is the honorable vice president. What man, leader, of merit could have a man like the VP around him, close to anything? If Ali really wants to look presidential, he must clean house. Dr. Singh should be sent back to the Pacific. The coconut juice there may restore his equilibrium. If Dr. Nandlall, notwithstanding his cloying internship to Exxon, must be dispatched, so he makes peace with truth and justice, let that be done, too.

One of the most self-denouncing symbols of the sticky palms and orgies with public money in the last five years is the people that are recruited and embraced and protected by the PPP government and leadership. Almost all are pathologically corrupt. Why only the tainted, the dirty, those with some past, some record, are hired is the question I put before Pres. Ali. No answer expected. No change envisioned. Guyana’s world class corruption industry wasn’t built in a day. Try the last five years; and then the training camps of the 23 before. Begin with party Congresses. The national challenge is to find a land more lawless than Guyana. In aggregate, it is what tarnishes the Ali presidency, the Irfaan Ali already murky legacy. Murky is a synonym for tricky, nasty, unhealthy. My best to the presidency.

(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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• accountability, broken promises, discarded commitments, GHK Lall, Irfaan Ali, PPP/C, Transparency

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