A challenge: praise or pity the President

Jun 02, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

Hard truths…

(Kaieteur News) – The widespread floods are a challenge of crisis proportions for many Guyanese. There’s another test: either to praise or pity Pres Ali. Waters rising, surging, in alarming crests. There’s that breathtaking, jarring, mind-bending photo: Excellency Ali with a shovel.

Emptying an ocean with a spoon. Building his own Panama Canal. His costume was headgear, boots and cloak. He took care not to turn his hat backwards. What to make of this shoveling at futility? Another choreographed production crafted to impress Guyanese. A man with the people in a time of distress. A man for any season, whatever poison to be swallowed. A man who abandons good sense, robes himself with contempt.

If Guyana was America, Pres. Ali would not hear the end of his shovel and showmanship epic. The comedians would have made mincemeat of him, made that into a punching bag, and have a field day. I warned Excellency Ali: Oftentimes, his love for the theatrical is taken too far. With shovel in hand, he registers as frivolous. If his handlers, his ministers, his Office of the President advisers will tell him, I will. He trivialises the presidency. He makes himself in a caricature. Of someone trying too hard. Of a leader lost in the ludicrous. Of a man lacking insights about time and place, circumstances and calamities. There’s a time for pomp and production. For the eye of the cameras, for the glazed eyes of his bewitched watchers, benumbed imitators. Too much liking for spectacle degrades, fosters the self-disrespecting. I pity Pres. Ali, a man now confirmed as his own weakest link. Shovel in hand, and foot blotting out mind.

There is appreciation, sometimes a salute, for Guyana’s Head-of-State with garbage bag in tow, cleaning up the town. Or braving the rain for a video with a neat stack of prawns as cheerleaders. Ow! A little politics helps to keep things light, lowers tensions and blood pressure. Duck soup to recharge fading spirits. A leader who cares, caring for the entourage, giving them something to clap, sell. But what about the people? What of Guyanese trapped in floodwaters? Guyanese who dodge walls of water, race to seek lower, drier, safer ground? Guyanese made miserable by dirty water to their knees, in their homes, on their minds? Here’s a country spoken of magnificently. Yet its people living a wet and raggedy existence whenever the skies open.

Billions upon billions spent. And what Guyanese get is their president with a shovel. It’s a moment etched in local history; a tacky story now engraved into eternity. The presidency reduced to the ridiculous and the scandalous. Am I the only one seeing Pres. Ali’s latest gaudy antic in a grim hour as an attitude and reaction that border on the grotesque? There’s complete readiness to admit sizing up the shovel situation in the wrong way. If so, then what is the fittest way to anoint that latest caper of the president, who has seemingly lost touch with reality, with the dictates of commonsense, with the demands of the moment? Praise him, or pity him?

I think that Pres. Ali is entitled to the freest hand, the most spacious playground, to practice his fantasies, idiosyncrasies. Privately is the only condition. Secret Cabinet gatherings fit the bill well. Conditions fraught with peril, dread. Floodwaters to make any Guyanese Noah run and build an ark. Pres. Ali builds a dam with a shovel. From Fort Island to Fantasy Island to Shovel Island. Does Guyana’s president have a touch of Dutch? In the sixth year of the Ali presidency, he finally found a coat-of-arms that honours his reign. A shovel conquering a sea of water. I have a motto that’s immaculate: One presidential shovel, One Guyana. May wretched, flooded out Guyanese sisters and brothers find some real relief from their trials.

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

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

GHK Lall, pity, President

Latest News