A man of his word

Oct 09, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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(Kaieteur News) – It is intriguing to read the priceless truths that escape from the fertile head of Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, Guyana’s second vice president.  With respect to Prime Minister Mark Phillips, something is wrong with that counting, that ordering of the PPP hierarchy.

From de facto president to de facto first vice president, howzat for a fact in regard to the one, the only, the irrepressible, the honorable Bharrat Jagdeo?  See!  I am keeping to my promise of good behaviour for the first 100 days in this second coming of the PPP Government.  Who in the PPP can find fault with how I am putting things together, placing them before the public?

The last priceless truth that raced from the mind of Dr. Jagdeo was that President Irfaan Ali, another worthy from the category of one and only, is a man who keeps his word.  If he says that he will do something, then it is guaranteed with sacred seals affixed that it will be done.  God bless ye merry gentlemen.  Just in time for Xmas.  Ye band of merry men, band of brothers that stick together through cash grant promises, word given, word honored.  It was Jagdeo at his best: running to the rescue and saving Dr. Irfaan Ali from any disgrace.

All that is noted and heartily endorsed; it was the vice president doing his best version of circling the wagons, as in one for all and all for one.  Nevertheless, it still mystifies how someone neglected to copy Minister Vickram Bharrat when the memo about keeping one’s word was dispatched, come droughts, floods, or that worse hell, oil prices collapsing.  Cash grants might be considered a failed model in the minister’s books, but not in those of the president.  Let the celebrations begin.  Let the joys of Xmas begin from now in early October.  After all, I am taking the soothing doctor at his word -if de prezzident seh suh is suh.  To this point, I think that PPP luminaries are asking themselves if their eyes are failing them, if they could be reading right.  Read on and right on, brothers (sisters are not left out).  It is so.  Unfortunately, matters will now take a turn, and some sourness likely resulting.  Not from me, but my friends, followers, and admirers in the PPP, with Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo in the lead seat.

I completely agree that Pres. Irfaan Ali is a man of honor.  As an aside, it is that same phrase ‘man of honour’ that the insiders in the Mafia brotherhood take pride in calling one another during their blood oaths.  Since all are on the same page, with no dissenters that Mohamed Irfaan Ali as a citizen, as a national leader, is a man that honours his word given, then what follows should be easier than a, b, c; or P-P-P.  From the mists of not-too-distant archives, I exhume that most wondrous of constructions. We will “review and renegotiate” all contracts.  Three words of material significance, of eternal immaculacy, and just from five short years ago.  Surely, no one has developed a convenient case of either myopia or amnesia, or the early onset of dementia?  Surely, those three words uttered so courageously, so powerfully, and so inspiringly by Dr. Ali stand on the same sacred footing as the words employed by the president relative to cash grant(s)?  And, no less as surely, a man of his word, a man of honour, is one that takes the greatest care to ensure that there is a rigid constancy, come what may, in fulling words once articulated with a grand flourish?

To help His Excellency along, a little primer may prove to be worth more than a bar of gold.  (I could use of one of those).  An oil contract is an intangible, and even more so when the product itself is as far away as Mars, figuratively speaking.  I could visualise Pres. Ali putting that (review and renegotiate) hot potato as it involves oil on the back burner to cool off, and with every intention of getting back to it, and making a determined push to deliver on his word given.  I will give him that, for now.  While the oil contract is the equivalent of the Geneva Conventions for ordinary Guyanese and compels that much interest, a cash grant of $100k plus is reality, and has personal urgency, as in now.  It is magnetic, it is magic. Didn’t I say real money, right now?  Compare that to fighting for more oil contract billions, which could be a fantasy leading to trouble and falling out with partners. Summary: Pres. Ali did review his promise, prompting him to renegotiate with himself.  He kept his word, by his standards.  I keep mine, by universal ones.  Not one bad word for a hundred.

(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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• Bharrat Jagdeo, cash grant, GHK Lall, man of his word, PPP Government, Promises

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