The PPP leadership’s metabolism problem

Dec 10, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard Truths by GHK Lall

(Kaieteur News) – The PPP Government’s leadership has a low metabolism problem.  It’s unrelated to any weight problem.  Sorry to disappoint folks; certain places I don’t touch.  Though a younger breed of PPP operators, Irfaan Ali, Bharrat Jagdeo, and Anil Nandlall have grown up on one diet, know only one way of living.  Now that they find themselves with extraordinary power, they revert to what has always dictated their existence.

What is it that the PPP leadership has always known?  What has been the indoctrination of their youth, from the time of Dr. Cheddi Jagan and Mrs. Janet Jagan, his formidable spouse?  In a nutshell, the teachings of communism, that political religion of total control.  Control the media.  Control public service branches.  Control the security machinery.  Control the legislative assembly.  Control the judiciary.  Control the regional administrative centers.  What did I neglect to include?  Not much, I think, other than its seeming control of today’s political opposition, to some extent.  Has this not been the way since the old PPP guard took office, when the addictions to control started small, then mushroomed under the younger Turks to almost blanket control in every area I identified?  Anyone in the PPP who wish to register an objection is free to do so.  They know the game they are playing, and the deceptions they are living.  Guyanese realities are too many, too stark, and too much in the face to be denied, or wished away.  Get ready for the leadership metabolism problem, what doesn’t change.

A radical changeover was required when the first corporate explorers came, discovered oil by the buckets.  Without a blink, or a pause, the PPP leadership traveled at the speed of sound from communists to capitalists.  On the face of recent developments, there are no bigger and sharper disciples of capitalism today that the former fanatical devotees of communism.  Even luminous local capitalist presences, such as Banks DIH and Farfan and Sterling are prompted to yield ground to the PPP’s capitalist flight, be content with taking a backseat.  There are none better today than Drs. Ali, Jagdeo, and Singh at chattering up a cyclone about commercial viability, corporate profitability, and foreign investor hospitality.  From Down with Colonialism and Down with Imperialism, the PPP has converted to Up with Capitalism and Up with Exxon.  The PPP went from down with the running dogs of capitalism to up with sanctity of contract and up 21^st century slavery for Guyanese.  Forget about Cheddi Jagan turning over in his grave like Banquo’s cadaver.  Think about controlled and commandeered Guyanese being deceived by PPP agents and pushed to look upon their foreign slave masters as their new saviors.  Did somebody point to Exxon and say look right there?  I didn’t.

Listening to the likes of such illustrious Mensa Club comrades as Irfaan Ali, Bharrat Jagdeo, Ashni Singh, and Anil Nandlall, all that is heard is money, democracy, and transparency.  A Martian may fall for that, but not even Guyanese who may fit neatly into the category of sturdy village idiot.  Indeed, the PPP leadership, as outlined today, holds money high.  But that’s only half the story.  The old teachings, old indoctrinations, drummed into their heads from the cradle, have not been let go.  Not one inch.  Why is it then that all of them (Ali, Jagdeo, Nandlall, and miscellaneous others with weaker communist credentials and visions) are so committed mind, body, and soul to control all aspects of Guyanese life.  Recall from b4: public service institutions, public security, national assembly, independent media, access to information, the judiciary and there is one repeated, undeniable reality.  First creeping control.  Then, more control.  Last, the Holy Grail -total control.  Who in the PPP wants to say that it is not so?  Step up.  Speak up.  And let Guyanese get to decide how that holds up in the weight of the environment.  If not so, then why do so many Guyanese live with so much dread that they hide their pain, don’t speak or write publicly?  The control is that fear-inducing, crippling.  Even Excellency Donald Ramotar, a dyed-in-the-wool doctrinaire PPP loyalist, was savaged for speaking differently.

This is the PPP leadership’s metabolism problem.  Govt leaders craftily say they are about capitalism, profits, and democracy’s freedoms.  Simultaneously, the same PPP leadership of Ali, Jagdeo, Singh, and Nandlall cannot operate, exist, without communism’s total control.  Lockdown information.  Lockout undesirables.  Lockup thinking, speaking.  Democracy’s freedoms and total control cannot coexist.  Today’s Guyana provides the evidence in trumps.  There’s the PPP metabolism problem.  Capitalism’s money, but warring for absolute mastery.

(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, leadership, metabolism, PPP, weight problem

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