Jagdeo-a circus rider atop several tigers

Nov 12, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hear Bharrat Jagdeo holding his own court.  Grinding his teeth, complaining.

“So it wasn’t the seriousness of the offense that determined bail, it was a convenience to the Mohameds. So, they could pay $150,000 in cash. People don’t get bail for that. You can imagine the world looking on at Guyana and saying what is happening in that country, what’s happening from the US and everywhere else. What is happening?”

 The lamenter was Guyana’s most conflicted, most cunning citizen, Dr. Dodger, Bharrat Jagdeo.  It is at times like these that I am left in awe at not just the brassy-faced nature of the man, but his slickness at separating PPP fingerprints from a set of circumstances that has the party’s and leadership’s names written everywhere.  I see Jagdeo, the circus rider struggling to straddle several tigers simultaneously.

“People don’t get bail for that.”  How can they not when imported State counsels claimed to have evidence in hand, but when they opened their hands, there was no evidence in them, or anything close to such in them?  The evidence in their hands couldn’t backup the claims of their mouths.  I urge fellow Guyanese to return to the 2020 elections, and those court petitions filed by the PNC.  The courts couldn’t sustain them.  Because other than contentions, there was nothing; no evidence.  Like the PNC, so the Jamaicans standing as legal proxies for this State.  In short: get out of here.

Dr. Jagdeo said that “People don’t get bail for that.”  For sure, an extradition request is serious business, puts the Government of Guyana between a rock and a hard place.  But serious people in serious leadership positions-ranging from junior minister to chief minister-do not connect well with people who are under serious international scrutiny.  They go to great lengths, so that they don’t get connected at all.  I say this to Guyana’s new Master Lamenter: people don’t have (get) relationships like that; not even passing ones, save for hi, and right, and that’s it.  Ordinary Guyanese may have to engage in such relationships, due to force of circumstances; but not any national leader who is serious about his or her own reputation, credibility.  No leaders-incumbent or aspiring-get into those kinds of binds.  Not through the actual happening alone, as did for the inaugural.  But also, the damning appearance of what took place on that occasion.

And, while people don’t get bail for that, Dr. Jagdeo, I present this for his consideration.  The same people that don’t get bail for that, also don’t get invited to attend a national moment of majestic grandeur.  Like when the president gave his inaugural address at the National Cultural Center in late August 2020.  To aid in jogging Mr. Jagdeo’s sometimes convenient memory, I didn’t get invited to that occasion.  But the gold dealer community did get invited to that celebration of the dawn after lengthy national trauma and heavy national uncertainty.  If one and a slip of the planning people, I could understand.  But how could so many of them get an invitation to share in the inaugural joy, when many of those same law-abiding citizens were on the FBI and U.S. Department of Homeland Security radars?  There is getting on the inside of the PPP tight circle, which few can do; and there is a need for all Guyanese to get some sense, which only a few can achieve.  There is getting, and then there is another kind of getting in the political ghetto that is Guyana.

“It was a convenience to the Mohamed.”  So opined Master Jagdeo.  It is a convenience now for the Vice President and PPP kith and kin to put as much distance as they can from the Mohameds.  The U.S. Department of Treasury (OFAC) didn’t spill the beans on the PPP Government’s permanent secretary and the Mohameds family, and it is highly likely that the same Bharrat Jagdeo would have been saying that gold smuggling is a product of Guyanese imagination.  His own words from 2021 have now come back to haunt him.  Furthermore, Bharrat “the Prevaricator” Jagdeo would never have had a problem with bail, nor speaking of what is a “convenience.”  Bail could be granted to a murder accused, shaved down to manslaughter, and neither he nor his party didn’t have objection to that; word is that big people had a hand in that development.

History and the archives don’t lie.  Anti-money laundering efforts were laffed at when the PPP returned to office.  Gold smuggling was fun and fullin’ pockets.  Which Customs Chief or Tax Chief at the GRA would have the nerve, take it upon themselves, to waive all those billions due?  What came down from political heights then is going down now.  Jagdeo shifts defensively.  His pants split revealingly.  A circus rider clawing at air.

(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, complaining, court, GHK Lall, Mohamed

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