Pres. Ali expectations dashed

Feb 25, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – It is now over five years since Irfaan Ali holds national leadership. Excellency Pres. Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali, to dispel any hairbrained ideas about disrespect. I thought that over half a decade later, he would be better. A thought that now mocks. I calculated that he would have learned and grown more, with five years as leader under his belt.

It’s disappointing to be so wrong about a man who it was said held promise, to turn out to be so, ah, minimal. I expected maturity, a leader inspiring in what is dependable: word said, word lived, honoured.

Expectations dashed. Again, and again. Hands thrown up in despair; more like disgust, what’s dismissive. There was the celebration of Maha Shivratri recently, and the worldly Pres. Ali was at his expansive best, the kind that he delights to: what is hollow, contradictory, diminishing. Better men may care. Excellency Ali gives the back of his hand and a sharp glare at those who say that he should live his words. And what were they?

“Reflect, act, unite.” Thanks, Mr. President. Thank God for scriptwriters, screeners, and handlers. I take the leader literally, and now direct my own words to all present in this sward of 83,000 squares, not just observant Hindus. But all those from the ABC&E hodgepodge, and further down the alphabet Trinidadians and Venezuelans.

Reflect on Pres. Ali’s five years at the top, be honest. The top has grown taller and fatter, the bottom has endured considerable weight loss from the waist down. Put differently, from below the middle to the bottom has shriveled.

In Guyanese dialect: ‘de battam drap out’. For those poor souls inquiring, how so, here’s the short answer: it’s those budgets, stupid. For many, it has been economic upheaval, economic depression. Economic depression that lasts long enough leads to mental depression. I lay that before Pres. Ali to pause and ponder (reflect, as he said). There’s a qualifier: if those are still, or were ever, part of his makeup.

Pres. Ali had the chance to live another one from that triplet of thought-provoking words. Act, he told his devoted Hindu audience. Devoted to their divines, with Pres. Ali competing for that coveted spot. The President had a chance to act, live his own word. Rather than act, he turned his back. For a man who is in love with acting (acting the presidency), he has been stubbornly resistant to be what made Spike Lee a cinematic immortal, a universal icon. Do the right thing! One national budget and Pres. Ali failing to do right is understandable.

The second national budget under his watch, and his falling down on the job is representative of individual frailties, limitations; hence, forgivable. But the same song of failing to act (his own word) and failing the poor people in Guyana, for a third AND a fourth AND a fifth time through the mechanisms of the national budgets in the Ali era, well, what would anyone with a head say of those?

Define such an appalling instance of leadership failure, disgrace? Pardonable just flew through the window at Mach speeds. Because he didn’t act to correct. Consolable shattered on the rocks of Ali indifference. Because he refused to act. After five years and five budgets that blew through the roof, I think there’s the unlearnable, the incorrigible and the unexplainable displayed in technicolor. Sorry, Excellency Ali. When he didn’t act, the rest is left to me.

The third word in Pres. Ali’s outstanding trio delivered at the Maha Shrivatri festival was “unite.” Say one thing about Pres. Ali, when he pipes up, he doesn’t go halfpipe. He may not be Olympian, but stentorian is he. Unite. Didn’t he say that same luscious word during his first incarnation five August seasons ago?

Check what the people in his command went and did, with him saying, doing, nothing to reverse. IDPADA-G money yanked under false pretenses. Some humble, honest, hopeful Indigenous Guyanese hurled out of a bus in the middle if the dangerous wilderness just before the last elections.

Five budgets that swelled the ranks of Guyanese impoverished, widened the divide between the superrich (One Guyana scheme) and the suffering poor, and which left half of Guyana traumatized. And screaming and cursing. But the man says UNITE. He must be a child of the night who has problems seeing the light.
Respect, act, unite. Easy to say. Anal and pancreatic pain to deliver. ‘See why ah luv Daktah Alee.’

(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, Hindu, Maha Shivratri, Pres. Ali

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