A secret society

Dec 11, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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(Kaieteur News) – It is now obvious that Guyana is a secret society.  Guyanese are living under a PPP Govt. that delights in its standard practice of well-guarded secrets, and a leadership that loves the way of life built on more high-level secrets.  There are codes that govern exchanges (procurement contracts).  A coded language with a group of star speakers.  Rituals that a select set of well-connected men and women use to polish their law-abiding pretenses.  The only things missing may (may) be secret handshakes and passwords.  Men in the top tiers of the PPP Govt. speak about democracy and honesty, but their life story is about secrecy.

Is there a country anywhere, where the results of a census are national security secrets?  Guyana is.  Are there leaders who operate as though they are running from dark deeds, and must deal, therefore, in secrets?  Guyana has them by the ton.  Secrecy abounds, but they still blabber about transparency, honesty, duty to country, and similar farces.  Why does the national unemployment rate have to be a secret?  Why does the poverty rate, with all the high-placed and high-priced numbers men present in Guyana, have to be a secret, something about which the World Bank and like institutions have to lament?  If there are no official numbers released on crucial items and areas, then no one can evaluate, calculate, and circulate what is authoritative, what exposes PPP governance as shabby and short of the mark.  Mainly rank deceivers.  Largely coverup masters.  Not-so-secret operators with lots of secrets to paper over, bury deep, or keep safe and secure among themselves.  If obtaining information comes to mind, then Guyanese are grasping how the PPP secrets program functions.

How does the report on a helicopter crash that killed five Guyanese soldiers and wounded two others could ever qualify to be a secret to be held from the public?  What kinds of secrets are embedded in that report that they have to be protected for two years and counting?  If a report on a fatal helicopter crash involving those who gave their lives for their fellows could be held as a secret to be spirited away in a Witness Protection Program, then what else falls into that category?  Perhaps, the fittest question is: what PPP Govt. dealings are so pure, so lacking in the questionable, that they can be cleared for publishing?  If a copter crash report is secret, then why not a dirty contract award for the same secret treatment?  If a corrupt contract award, then what prevents a revealing Guyana Police crime report from seeing the light of day?

Guyana’s current biggest project is the US$2 billion Wales gas-to-energy undertaking.  From day one, secrecy shrouded it.  It promises many good things for Guyanese, but its underpinnings still have to be hidden from them.  One determined leader insists that’s transparency, while not giving a hoot about how much that makes him look soft in the head.

Guyana’s biggest prize, Guyana’s biggest winner, is oil.  Look left or look right and audit reports about tens of billions in Exxon’s spending are under embargo, as though they are a part of some stiff US sanctions.  When Guyanese want to some faint idea about their true oil reserves, they are better off checking with Bloomberg, the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal.  Their own leaders collaborate with the exploiters of the Guyanese people like drooling sycophants.  If the PPP Govt. is about lawful business, then it shouldn’t have to be concerned about frank disclosure.  Since it is so anxious that it must conceals much, then by process of subtraction, it must be embroiled in dirty business, whatever earns the tag of underhand endeavors and sinister networks.

Considering the barrels of secrets that the PPP Govt. harbors, it must have constructed a hell of a huge warehouse to stock them.  Secrets such as the PPP Govt. hideaway would require a 10-storey warehouse that is surrounded by razor-wire, steel-reinforced, bunker bomb resistant, canine-controlled, ad subject to 24/7 human and electronic oversight.  Keeping secrets secure is a terribly expensive business.  The good part is that the Guyanese people oil money is paying for it.  The people fear the PPP Govt. so much that most of them shrink from asking about the need for all these secrets.  For its part, the PPP Govt. fears how dishonorable and disgraceful it will come across before the nation, that it secrets away the truths that Guyanese have a right to know.  More secrets are what’s likely.

(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, PPP, Rituals, secret society

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