Hard questions requiring hard truths from Pres. Ali

Feb 01, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

---

Hard Truths by GHK Lall

(Kaieteur News) – Pres. Irfaan Ali and his PPP Govt. are looking worse by the day, development.  On many issues of national importance, the president and his group of governors have faltered heavily, limped along unsteadily, retreated from fearfully.  I pick a few only, those that have significance for me and a host of other citizens, to generate some hard questions, which I humbly lay at Dr. Ali’s feet.  Not answering wouldn’t be the best option.  Unleashing shadowy operators and dimmer lights are meaningless for the short thrift given to them, and the great discredits they heap on the PPP and, I say, Excellency Ali himself.  Hard questions call for hard truths, of which the president should be the best champion.  But which hasn’t happened to date.  The questions follow.

Q1: Mr. President: from your 2020 inaugural address, the vision was of national unity, and working to make that happen.  How unrealistic, how less achievable, is that today, given that 109,000 Guyanese voters now watch as their franchise is mocked and trampled upon, their leader hung, drawn, and quartered in public?  Pardon me, sir, but your signature verbal production One Guyana now seems to be the effigy that burnt itself beyond recognition, wouldn’t you say?  Unless (unless) One Guyana had as its unpublished Mission Statement what embraces Teutonic Aryan ambitions, and of that what say you, chief?

Q2: Excellency Ali: two of the more stirring watchwords from your August 2020 inaugural address were transparency and accountability.  Where are those now, given the secrecies and the schemes that surround audits of US billions in Exxon’s expenses?  I submit that transparency is in a comatose state.  And, how do the secrecies that saturate the US$2 billion (US$2 billion, mind you) Wales Gas-to-Energy project occurring under your watch not put transparency and accountability to shame, and chase both of them out of town?

Q3: Dr. Ali, you are part of the PPP regiment that never tires to expound on the law and the inviolable nature of its majesty.  Then why the conspicuously ill-conceived and ill-advised intransigence on access to information, which the law allows?  Why, my lord, is there this backing away by you, this giving of space to yourself, when petitioners for information, provided for in the law, are denied what should be routine, and not swollen with the whimsical?  Though said many times, I say again.  Information is part of the oxygen, the lifeblood, of a democracy, what nourishes its growth, how does denying access to information not amount to derailing democracy most brazenly?  And, how does that denial not operate as a running sore and an ugly scar on you yourself, Mr. President, and your contributions to the presidency?  Or not point to gross dereliction of leadership?

Q4: Pres. Ali, my leader, one of the commitments from your second inaugural address was the appointment of an anticorruption commissar.  Where is he or she now, almost five months later, with corruptions hurtling along at breakneck speeds?  Or, Dr. Ali, did you assign the chief national anticorruption post to yourself, and forgot to share with the public?  Considering your unhappy intervention in alleged corruptions by one of your own people, and your incredibly readymade acceptance of what was tendered, does this stand as proof that Irfaan Ali is now Guyana’s de facto anticorruption chieftain?

Q5: the air is thick and weighed down by misinformation and disinformation, Mr. Ali, which you committed to targeting, and dealing with that deformed twin head-on.  Is there a change of heart, with those now nonissues?  Or, is it because, Dr. President, and I ask frankly, some of the PPP Govt’s own people (some even ministers) are among the leading purveyors of misinformation and disinformation in Guyana?  When a national government in a country that attracts international interest has among its chief businesses: 1) spreading rumors; 2) marketing innuendo; and 3) celebrating mastery of malice and slander, then that government has to qualify as lawless and reprehensible, by any definition, wouldn’t you say, Excellency?

Q6: when you as national leader, Dr. Ali, promised the Guyanese people some desperately needed relief money, with a caring eye on the poor and suffering, then think it funny to delay and play games with that cash, that couldn’t have been one of your finer moments, skipper, could it?

I apologise for using the personal pronoun.  I apologise further Dr. President for thinking of 10 questions, only to squeeze in 16 of them sideways.  Sixteen hard questions that call for hard answers cemented in hard truths.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

---

• GHK Lall, Hard questions, PPP Govt., President Ali

---