Latest update October 15th, 2026 10:30 AM
Power over principle
Kaieteur News – “The United Nations’ noble mission to maintain international peace and security will ring hollow if it allows power to triumph over principle and might to override right.” That was President Irfaan Ali building himself into a state of righteous indignation at the UN General Assembly, when he spoke to the extermination of the Palestinian people by the Israeli warmongers that is well underway in Gaza. We applaud the president for speaking vigorously about “power” and how “principle” must triumph over it.
It takes an abundance of vigor to say anything that would be helpful to the terrible ordeals of Palestinian men, women, and children. Because that could create bad blood between a country and the Israelis, who have the might of arms and the US Government as part of its arsenal.
We commend President Ali, on the one hand for making Guyanese proud. On the other, we have to callout the president for his own weakness, his lengthy failure, with those same postures that he took at the UN. Principle must triumph over power, and right must never be overridden by might.
Over at the UN, the president’s focus and energy were on human rights, peace, and the dignity of a trapped and tormented population. There is no objection at all, because when Guyana’s President Ali spoke, he spoke for many countries that are of the same view.
Over here in Guyana, the vigor of the president starts to fade, has been on a long, slow dimness, leaving him looking rather anemic, a leader who is deficient in vitality. Guyana labours under a wounding and crippling oil contract, engineered through the might of one of the US’s most enduring corporate powers.
But against that might, Guyana’s President Ali has forgotten what is right, what it is to be right. He is a pitiful shadow of himself, notwithstanding his vigorous words expounded passionately before a global audience. The Israeli Government claims the right to self-defence, no matter to what deplorable depths that has been taken.
The Guyana Government, with President Ali in the lead, has found shelter under the convenience of “sanctity of contract.” After brimming with rhetorical flourish at the UN about might and right, this is the right that Guyana’s president knows in his own arena of operations.
He and his government buckle under the might of ExxonMobil, with “sanctity of contract” held out as the right that Guyana cannot and will not challenge. When the national leader can blow so hot and cold, we find ourselves questioning the substances of which he is made. There is only one conclusion left to make. President Ali is happiest when he spews forth with a torrent of words. But when called upon to apply them in his own domestic context, he is at his weakest and his most pathetic.
Still worse yet, Guyana’s president is sure to have touched some positive chords at the UN. He made us proud, most likely impressed more than a few outside of Guyana, when he thundered that the grandness of power must not triumph over principle in the Gaza situation. How can that be improper or out of place, when many countries have already condemned the Gaza holocaust as a horror show, a crime against humanity, perpetrated by men with sick and depraved minds?
Hence, we inquire of Guyana’s president, since principle should triumph over power, then there should not be any shrinking from the power of the principle of national sovereignty. So long as the repulsive 2016 ExxonMobil contract stays unchallenged by the government, then the most that can be offered about the national sovereignty of Guyana is that it has been dragged through the mud, and now lies in shreds. There is the state of human rights in Gaza, which is safe, and spurred the president to deliver a punch that rocked. It is unfortunate that President Ali conveniently, and with a curious type of agility, makes a mockery of the rights of a sovereign nation, when he settles for the lameness of “sanctity of contract.”
It is obvious that the president is a leader who loves dealing in platitudes. Right against might and principle over power are pleasing, until he abandons both.
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