Dear Editor,
The first 100 days of the second Irfaan Ali go at clean governance and transformational leadership have been glorious. Glorious, if one has a fondness for bulldozing and sidelining, deflecting and obfuscating. Fodder for the pen. The PPP honeymoon is over. Really, truly, over.
In his second inaugural on a sultry Sunday by the Seawall monument, President Ali was in fine form. An anticorruption regime is in the cards. Three months and change later, Guyanese of all flavours are still straining their ears for a sighting of this combination of the man from Galilee and the Prophet from Mecca. May their names be revered. Don’t give up hope, I counsel, there is a third term to come, and that should be enough time to clean house first, then find an untouchable to get the job done. By then, all the carrions would have fled.
Separately, before and after, the president spoke of AI visions to fuel progress and development. Often, I question myself if President Ali is not AI gone out of line, then overboard. He promised to go after misinformation and disinformation on cyberspace, outer space, and any space within Guyana. He has moved on since. Duty done. Whatever is done or not done, that’s not part of the presidential portfolio; but other people’s problems. There’s a world of difference between scriptwriter smarts and serious smarts. I believe that somebody, probably the Hon. Attorney General, whispered to the president and set him on the right track.
Going after misinformation and disinformation will damage the PPP far more than its opponents. Thus, the world of Dr. Irfaan Ali turns: from bulldozing to obfuscating. Talking about smarts in the contexts of information, misinformation and disinformation, and Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo showed all Guyanese what real smarts look like. He promised some access to info after the September elections, then disappeared.
Like Pres. Ali, Vice President Jagdeo’s approach to thorny matters is for someone else to carry the load. Do these guys love to make speeches, or do they? I invite my fellow Guyanese (and Americans) to look closely at what happened when that Federal Grand Jury in Florida mentioned “government officials” in Guyana, as enmeshed in dirty dealings, such as gold smuggling, money laundering, and tax absconding. Everybody in the PPP Govt resigned immediately within the same first 100 days of their grasping the reins of national power. Irfaan Ali played forgetful (not a government official, folks [not I, sire]). Bharrat Jagdeo no longer has an idea of what is a government official, or who is, but he knows that he isn’t one. He does know one, though, whom he has asked the Guyana Police to investigate.
And, Anil Nandlall, the man in the tugboat piloting that cargo of explosives called gold smuggling is still boxing his law books for a proper definition of who falls in the category of “government officials” and if PPP presences in State House, Freedom House, and Guyana Government Houses meet the criteria. The famed and feared trio of Ali, Jagdeo, and Nandlall decided to relinquish their Guyanese citizenship, and are now foreigners. Hence, they cannot and do not fall into the any definition by anyone of “government officials.”
I lay the aggregation of what is presented here (unsaid also) at the feet of honest Guyanese, and press them to take a stand. First, seriousness about corruption cleanup or continuing with the patented farce about anticorruption mechanisms and men? Second, some degree of access to information, or another strain of high-level misinformation, i.e., setting up Guyanese for a fall, then cutting the parachute strings? Like cash grant bait-and-switch? I’m barely warming up.
In 2020, the same Pres. Ali fresh from taking his first victorious lap across the Milky Way, announced the dismantling of “onerous rules and regs” in the mining sector. He did. Then OFAC and other Yanks moved in, and took over. Today, the same PPP Govt of Pres. Ali is seeing the light and tightening up: do wrong in the sector, and risk getting gold license yanked. From the ponderous and onerous to the dangerous and frivolous. Why, dangerous? Because the PPP is playing with fire, risks burning the hairs deep inside its nostrils. Why frivolous? Because it is more talk and no PPP leader will tamper with being bad friends with major donors, whether for campaign purposes, or petty cash refills. Petty can be eliminated.
Last, one mouth in the PPP warns of oil prices and oil cycles and belt tightening. A bigger jawbone in the PPP Govt, speaks of big-ticket projects, without saying a word of additional debts to be incurred. No borrowing, no spending. No spending, no stealing. There’s a snapshot of the first 100 days of the second Ali-led PPP. Am thinking of two more parts, as sequels.