Govt. officials-hold on Jagdeo

Nov 20, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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(Kaieteur News) – I am keeping this gold smuggling business on the front burner.  If Vice Pres. Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo believes that the moment has passed, I regret having to deliver a surprise.

This is now beginning, barely reaching lukewarm temperature.  He may have felt that he and his team have done their damage, and are ready to move on.  Hold horses, boss.  What’s the rush?  This has to stay public, under the spotlights. Amid the swirl of sanctions and then U.S. Federal grand jury indictments, two words were always prominent, became the rage in dirty political Guyana, i.e., PPP Guyana.  “Government officials”, the two words are, and from both Treasury’s OFAC, and the Federal Court in Florida.  Now there’s a mystery in those two words.

From June 11, 2024 to October 6, 2025, a total of 16 months, government officials, though in the plural, rested on one named Guyanese public servant.  Permanent Secretary, and PPP nonvoting Central Executive member, Ms. Mae Thomas.  A remarkable development occurred at the end of those 16 months.  Through some high-level arrangements, most likely involving some horse-trading, Ms. Mae Thomas was sent to a PPP-constructed convent to say her prayers of remorse and thanksgiving.  Like Queen Guinevere in the Legend of King Arthur, due to her very public lapse, it was off to the cloistered confines of silent monastery.

With the arranged and hastened exit of Ms. Mae Thomas, enter the PPP Govt’s chief propagandist and boiler-room attendant, Bharrat Jagdeo (doctor of shift and drift) to expound on the U.S. presentation of “government officials” tied to gold smuggling.  In Jagdeo’s suddenly tightly narrowed head, “government officials” reduced to the one person that he wanted to identify by name, and did.  GHK Lall held that dubious honour. In a split second, Lall mutated into the sum of “government officials.”  Jagdeo was cunning enough to throw in ‘customs officials’ for camouflage, but those who are familiar with how he operates, would have recognized the decoy of customs officials, mere extras.  His first and ultimate objective was to be rid of an infernal problem once and for all.  Jagdeo failed again, fell on his face, as usual.

Question: Why do “government officials” not ensnare PPP personnel in nationally high offices?  Particularly those comrades that maintained close relationships with the Mohamed family, other members in the small gold trading community?  More pointedly, why is Bharrat Jagdeo disqualifying himself and his ministerial comrades from the definition of “government officials?”  It doesn’t have to be an expansive one, and it still applies to their persons.  When gold smuggling is the concern, no one in government should be exempted from consideration.  Not past governments, not the present government.

I go further, those who shared in gold community friendships, in political campaign financing exchanges, and in dumping gold smuggling realities under the bed in the backroom, all fall within the U.S. Government’s all-encircling description of “government officials.”  Dr. Jagdeo has no authority to remove himself.  Further, Jagdeo is not the proper person to be deciding who is a government official in Guyana, and who is not.  Has he not been part of government(s)?  Therefore, he cannot unilaterally separate himself and others from “government officials.”  What are ministers, he himself, public sector officials?  Religious (ha, ha) officials?  Civil society officials?  I move along.

Due to the radioactive nature of gold smuggling, it means that such smuggling must be contained to very trusted people.  That means political people with clout, who owe their generous donors, their reckless friends.  That means very senior public servants who delight in executing certain transactions a certain way to collect lucrative rewards.  And that means, when matters bordering on deep political crisis spill into the news, then the reengineering of the narratives and redirecting of the blame must be the first part of coverups.  The second is to locate a whipping boy and try to bully him into silence.  Isn’t this what Jagdeo and his agents have tried their best to distance from the PPP Govt.?  And next to pin on a convenient, object of their wrath, under the banner of “government officials”?  Often men and women who think that they are the smartest in the room overestimate themselves.

They compound that human error by making a fatal one: they underestimate who is standing against them.  Whether they attack in single file, or in swarming formations, it doesn’t matter.  Because their substances are scurrilousness, deviousness, and two other undeniable elements.  Their hands are dirty, and their clothes smell of the fragrance of their slippery friends.  For the best in the U.S. kind of government officials, start at the top, then move lower.

(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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• gold smuggling, Jagdeo, Mae Thomas, PPP

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