PPP Dictatorship and Ali’s arrogance!

The Qur’an reminds, in verse 18 of the 31st chapter (sūrah),  “Do not (contemptuously) turn your face away from people, nor tread haughtily upon earth. Allah does not love the arrogant and the vainglorious.”

President Irfaan Ali seems to have ignored this important admonition even as he presents himself as a devout Muslim.   His haughtiness as he engages the people of Guyana whom he deems to be beneath him is as transparent as the morning sun. It is repulsive as he embraces his fantasy of being the Emir of Little Dubai. It is outrageous, imperious, as he descends upon African villages and with imperial disdain hands out taxpayer funded trinkets with the expectation that they will prostrate and grovel at his bejeweled sandals and grab at the hem of his silky raiment and extravagance!

Irfaan Ali, unfortunately for the ordinary citizen, has been elevated to the highest office of the land, despite the 19 fraud charges brought against him by the Police, (and summarily dismissed by his DPP, when he took office) and his questionable undergraduate academic qualifications, including his Ph.D. thesis allegedly generated under similar questionable circumstances, has somehow fed a distorted view of his qualification for the role as President of the  Cooperative Republic!

At this critical stage of the country’s development, Ali has done nothing of good repute but perfected his skill at deception! His penchant to declare grand projects for the country, is but to merely mask his, and the PPP’s incompetence and inability, to create viable, meaningful development that would redound immediately to the benefit and welfare to the large masses of the people of the country. To pretend to address the people’s pressing needs by his several Hollywoodised productions and grand sleight of hand, more a tribute to and envy of David Copperfield, the world’s greatest illusionist, than to the true needs of his fellow Guyanese.

The PPP’s response to Mayor Ubraj’s recent unveiling of this con game played on the citizens of his constituency in Georgetown, the capital city, is unassailable evidence of the fact of their fear that his revelations and actions threatened the exposure of their well-crafted mass illusion! They cannot allow themselves nor the public to see them get rid of their costume by independent Indian voices, who expose their “new imperial clothes” and render null their facile views, while making transparent their constant racist hogwash -that has become the daily fare of their dictatorship.

But, we cannot forget Ralph Ramkarran whose painful exit from the PPP was accompanied by a barrage of their most derogatory and vile condemnation, then unimaginable of a person who had sat in the highest representation of the party, ensconced in their high leadership for decades. It now appears, however, that after years of public ridicule, humiliation and embarrassment the PPP have again been able to succeed in corralling him this time not clad in Caesar’s purple but drab, high perhaps, on his own draft!

In a series of rapid published interventions he has now sadly dispensed with the courage he once found and self-respect to now re-engage in obtuse, invectives against the coalition, and their supporters, all in exchange for, apparently, the joys of the filthy sucre or dreaded Dutch disease of the new Oil and Gas economy. Ramkarran no longer finds it morally responsible, or obligatory as a senior statesman to offer public commentary on the range of PPP malfeasance and poor governance. This old warrior, to his recent ANUG round table, has sheathed his sword and has given up his search for his Holy Grail, now finds time to publish rambling rants, that he as a Marxist, more than anyone else in the PPP knows, are but the product of  ‘false consciousness’, honed over decades of delusionary experiences.

I posit that Guyana is an impending disaster even as Ali continues to engage in a shameful popularity contest with his Vice President and mentor, that is beneath the dignity of the office he holds. His most recent effort at the publicly published dance-off with VP Jagdeo at their recent elitist Ball, ostensibly held to raise funds for the needy, reflects this insane predilection.

President Ali’s narcissistic appetite cannot be sated with these infantile displays. Nor could they, by his personal and government excesses, and abuse of public power. Dictators are not loved. They are feared! To win public adoration and gratitude which narcissists crave requires much more from the Head of State, and would be as illusory as the will ‘o the wisp, not while Guyana’s citizens struggle to navigate increasingly difficult social and economic challenges, that he and his racist cabal burden them with!

Yet, none of this would restrain the PPP nor preclude them from continuing to seek total domination of all sectors of Guyana. We must all, therefore, encourage Mayor Ubraj to continue his quest to expose the hypocrisy and corruption of the PPP and their enablers in the PSC. Courage is in short supply in this sad period of our country’s development. We crave the evolution of a collective citizenry adequately and politically sensitised to the mis-governance of the PPP, and who are prepared to confront the PPP dictatorship to save Guyana from certain destruction.

That should be our Holy Grail!