Pres. Ali has opportunity to honour inaugural commitment

Oct 17, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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(Kaieteur News) – Some citizens may think that I am under the microscope.  They revel at the thought that I am on trial.  There is pity for them.  Because, they are looking at the wrong man and in the wrong place.  The government, the PPP Government, is on trial.  What is it made of, what is it about, from its marrow to the expressions of its substances?

At an even more elevated plain, the highest possible in Guyana, it is the president of this Republic that is on the hot seat, due to the actions of his comrades.  President Mohamed Irfaan Ali is the one being tested, not I.  President Mohamed Irfaan Ali is the one who has to prove his words, not I.  Que accusat, probare debet.

On the day of his second inaugural address, Pres. Ali spoke with seeming earnestness about how he is going to go after and demolish those who are agents of misinformation and disinformation in the vastness and anonymity of cyberspace.  It is a tall order, and with the going a hard slog.  The challenge intensifies exponentially when the peddlers of misinformation and disinformation originate from his own community of workers.  How will the president be then, was a question that gained considerable traction?  What will the president do now that his own people are the mongers of misinformation and disinformation, since such are the only trades they know, what they have been incited to be about?

What will the president do, given that the PPP Government have prospered from what is cheap, low, sleazy?  Will Mohamed Irfaan Ali walk back his posture relative to misinformation and disinformation, because of who the offenders are?  Will Pres. Ali distance from his words, not honor them because of different standards that apply in those instances when it is his own who are peddling scurrilous falsehoods?

The range of facts and circumstances, the entire sum of them, involve some who once numbered among Pres. Ali’s closest relationships.  They are of gold smuggling, among many other allegations.  In the words of the president’s people, the president’s friends are now my friends.  Friends that I aided and abetted in some way for my benefit and to the loss of the people of this country.  Serious stuff, without a doubt.  Crooked developments and vile slanders directly, by innuendo, which must not be allowed to pass unaddressed.  If that is where I am, where is Pres. Ali?  After all, he was the once who made a soaring promise, a loaded one, before a gathering of foreign diplomats, and the largely curdled cream of Guyanese society.  I have my duty.  Pres. Ali has a bigger duty.  That is, to preside over what a clean government is about, to manifest what transformational leadership is about.

The president makes good on his words, his oath uttered before physical and electronic multitudes, and he stands at the heights.  There are no other options open to Guyana’s foremost national leader, Pres. Mohamed Irfaan Ali.  For, if he does not move to evidence how seriously he takes his own words freely given, then who is he?  It would be personally disturbing to see my president reduced to a man of pronounced hollowness, one who is in love with empty words and promises that have nothing to prop them up; no authentic spirit to make them come alive and go to work.  For a different kind of leadership and government.  For a Guyana that is radically and remarkably different from the sickly and slimy one that has been for the last five years, if not 25 and more.

The gold smuggling developments, and the handiwork of his political brethren, provides Pres. Ali with the opportunity to be about truths that can immortalise Guyana.  What will he do?  Of course, there is a price that has to be paid, through sacrificing those who have been loyal for the worst of reasons.  How did men amass so much power?  With whom did they share their wealth, however obtained?  Because no matter how much the leadership of the PPP Government tries to wiggle its way out of this one, to deflect onto the heads of others, it owns this unholy mess.  The foundations and personnel were in place long before 2015; and they lasted for years after 2020.  But who has patience, who in Guyana has a care, for such inconvenient truths?

When all of this is considered, all roads today lead to Pres. Ali.  He can distance.  He can duck.  He still has a duty to deliver on his word of honor given in terms of how he deals with misinformation and disinformation.  President Mohamed Irfaan Ali is now in this phase of test, dragged into tribulations of his own, by his own.  President Ali’s hour has now arrived.  May he prove true.

(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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• GHK Lall, inaugural commitment, Irfaan Ali, PPP Government

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