Pres. Ali – one who surrenders self-respect

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

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Hard Truth by GHK Lall

(Kaieteur News) – Many Guyanese chuckle at Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar total surrender to US priorities.  The polite rolls their eyes; the caustic sees a leader belittling her nation, in kowtowing before the relentless America juggernaut.  I think that is a reasonable position, thoroughly justified, for the T&T PM has rolled herself into a ball, relinquished the last vestiges of her self-respect.  Regarding Guyanese who see in PM Persad-Bissessar a leader of disturbing tendencies, they are advised to cast their eyes homeward, and recognise what they have in their own leader.

He was in there before the TT’s PM reached it.  A Guyanese leader who has been the biggest contributor in making himself into an effigy, a dartboard for derision.  When a man’s self-respect means so little to him, then there are few who can respect him.  Refer to the recently concluded Guyana elections of 2025.  The only person, local or foreign who twinned those elections as being “free and fair” was Dr. Irfaan Ali, Guyana’s budding baby strongman.  The EU didn’t.  The Carter Center didn’t.  The OAS didn’t.  Not one of the Elections Observer Missions have touched the livewire of free and fair, to date.  The Commonwealth is waited upon, but it would be a stunning development, if that group were to attest that Guyana’s elections were ‘free and fair’, or approached that blue ribbon standard.  Not one to be thrown off stride, especially by what is self-congratulatory, Excellency Ali has manifested a marked disregard for such handicaps, which he sees as mere hindrances that can be blown away by his verbal batteries on facts, truths, and Guyanese realities.  In Ali’s mind, because he says the elections free and fair, that’s all that matters; they were free and fair, and the world can talk cheese, suck sand.

Here is another instance of Dr. Irfaan Ali doing cartwheels to avoid taking a courageous stand for the biggest, richest development in Guyana’s history.  Among the few times that Guyana’s national sovereignty ever crosses Pres. Ali’s lips, the last dollar can be wagered that Venezuela’s Nicholas Maduro did one of his saber-rattling salsa war dances.  Suddenly, Dr. Ali remembers that Guyana is a sovereign nation, with all sacred rights enshrined, and every citizen summoned to stand in defense of territorial integrity.  A momentary glimpse of what One Guyana could look like-at least, in a crisis-is provided.  Out of the next 100 times, it is safe to assert that 99 times he is pontificating solemnly about sanctity of contract, without a whiff of the sacred sovereignty of Guyana heard.  He forgets what men and women died for, that special something called inviolable sanctity of sovereignty.  Sovereignty not bartered and subjugated for political profit, sovereignty that’s not dressed up in sanctity of contract.  That’s where Guyana is stranded.

Is there anything that lowers a man respect for himself (and the respect of others for him) more than such an abandonment of the obligation due to his place of birth?  When not a word, not even a muscle, is raised in defense of what is best for the Motherland?

Next, say to Pres. Ali that he and his government have relinquished any claims to transparency and he spirals into frenzies.  The PPP Govt has been the most transparent government that Guyana has ever seen or had.  The vital Oil Fund law was moved forward under the cover of darkness, and when a considerable number of Guyanese were disengaged due to holiday celebrations.  Yet, the president insists that that’s transparency.  Operating in a cloak-and-dagger manner, and only a fine scholar such as Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali could define that as transparency.  What does it take to get a man to such a state?  The results of a national census are hidden for three years, and that qualifies in Dr. Ali’s book as transparency.  Access to information, as provided for by the law, is stymied, thwarted, delayed, dodged, and even denigrated, at times, and by Pres. Ali’s Oxford don’s reckoning that is transparency.  Either all of Guyana need to be subject to a series of brain scans, and if they pass with flying colors, then I recommend the president as the next most fitting candidate to determine who is right about transparency.  If the president still had some self-respect inside, that morsel may have been surrendered, too.

Last, Pres. Ali sold Guyanese on unity alongside transparency in August, 2020.  In 2025, Guyana is more sharply, bitterly polarised, but the president contends that’s progress.  Crossover’s count.  If that’s the measure of national unity, then presidential self-respect has gone abegging.  I pity this brother.

(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, Irfaan Ali, Kamla Persad -Bissessar, self respect, US military, war

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