Searching for number one – where was he

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

Hard Truths by GHK Lall

(Kaieteur News) – It takes a national tragedy for revelations to emerge. Unwelcomed revelations. They crawl from some dark hole. Leave frightening footprints across wide acreages. Nothing related to a farm. Only how this country is run. Worse than a corner cakeshop. Worse that a low-class grogshop. Acreage in this situation is about the location of the national leader. Essequibo called. The souls of Pomeroon cried. Where, pray?

American intelligence, Israeli technology, and German machinery were all needed to unveil the whereabouts of Guyana’s leader. Now back in the saddle. Before, during the throes of a crisis of unprecedented proportions, there were senior officials sharing half-baked stories. Seemingly, they themselves were halfway underwater. Stories gyrating from side to side, in the manner of a drunk trying to navigate a straight line. Guyanese needed the head to be in attendance, in action, in command. Harsh realisation visited. The got pretenders and gameplayers (not those in New Jersey last Sunday). I know something about this, being a follower of Manchester United since boyhood.

Consider. Confidence flows from awareness that the head is home, around, in charge. Advisers advise. He decides. Leaders do so during national catastrophe and agonies. Leaders lead. From the front. But they have to be around, in the flesh. In the middle of matters. On top of them. An inspiring statement. Comfort-inducing moments. The MV Barima disaster may not have been predictable. But it was a floating timebomb with fuse pulled. A barge almost without bottom, long past its last legs.

In this context, Guyanese shouldn’t need to be palm readers or soothsayers to know the coordinates for their national leader. At least, an outline. Again, coordinates have no relation to any damn farm; that smelly story will be revisited when timely. A quick aside: nagging thought not easily shaken. How opportune the tragedy of the MV Barima! Despite so many lives lost! With so much pain left in the last poignant bubbles of its sinking! The MV Barima wipes all other Guyanese considerations and controversies from the media map. All, whether of green rolling farmlands, or the beasts that fill it. Miracles are known to happen during disasters. Just ask those who come out ahead from them.

I return to the tragedy; what bewilders a multitude of Guyanese. What happened to the national leader? One canned message that belatedly tried to convey the heartfelt. It delivered the antiseptic. A cool computerlike production, the craftsmanship of clinical minds in motion. The robotic amid the chaotic: an administrative tick. Message sent. Duty done. Many Guyanese-public servants, teachers, religious leaders-are obligated to inform their superiors they will be travelling overseas. Protocols to follow. Forms to fill out. Even at the lower levels, there are times when a handover is demanded. So that there’s seamless continuity. So that everyone in an organisation is on the same footing. They have some knowledge, however limited, fleeting. At the national level, when national leaders are on the move, and out of national spaces, there has to be some requirement within applicable protocols that dictates the nation has to be informed. Is there such a requirement? What was done? What, maybe, not followed? For one, Guyanese are in the dark. Return, please, to my earlier assertion of Guyana being run worse than a corner cakeshop, a low rum-shop.

Some aspects of a national leader’s travels do not, and should not, arise to a national security concern. Not when the ordinary is involved. Not for a ball that’s airborne. Not for the company kept. Not for the dress of distant lands and cultures that now have to be switched. I will endorse the following. Leaders need space. Leaders need time for themselves. Leaders also need to know that they must respect all Guyanese. In how they deliver what is due to them. Especially, during traumas inflicted by national tragedy, Guyanese found out the last thing they desired to know. A headless state in operation. I hope that the unbecoming is not defended by the unsavory.

(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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American intelligence, Essequibo, GHK Lall, Israeli technology, national tragedy

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