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By GHK Lall
The PPP Government, with General Jagdeo, in the forefront, has developed a standard of operation. It drops what it thinks is a bombshell, what is sure to shock, and then it retreats and leaves things to sort themselves out. This has become the handiwork of Brother Jagdeo. The case of IDPADA-G stands as a clear and compelling example, a dangerous one.
There was what I would call a relentless campaign to shake up the organization, and in the process kill two birds with one big brick. The first was to neutralize a leading Black (read PNC) activist and render him an irrelevant and impotent figure. The second objective was to push newly dependent Black Guyanese to come on hands and knees, and with cap in hand, to beseech the PPP for some favorable consideration, any kind of helpful attention. In both calculations, the PPP and brother Jagdeo did not make the significant headway anticipated. In typical fashion, however, the former President hurled his bomb and then disappeared from the scene of the crime.
What the PPP and Dr. Jagdeo came up with was nothing short of cunning: about people (black) complaining, but nobody facing the ones they were accusing. Even the barbarous Romans did better than that, and were above that gutter. Then, it was about ranking IDPADA-G people allegedly tampering with the till, helping themselves (unspoken but sure to be understood), and shortchanging those who really needed the funds that were earmarked. Unexpectedly and in a stroke of misfortune for brother Jagdeo, his gambit went nowhere, as IDPADA-G had the audit papers and the assertive people ready to go to the mat to defend their work, their record, and their character (now impugned).
So, when the PPP and archangel Jagdeo (some would say archdemon) couldn’t trap and trick, the leading brother took to the winds, and it was/is left to the Hon. Attorney General, SC Anil Nandlall to take matters from there. The problem is that nothing is moving from where it is (there in Jagdeo land), to where it should be (elsewhere, where there is some light). In sum, matters are stuck, and the more IDPADA-G officers try, the more they are getting nowhere. It is the equivalent of being bogged down in the swamps of a political stalemate. What is a political stalemate inflicted by the PPP and Jagdeo is an organizational crisis for IDPADA-G. It limps, and it hurts.
Now, this brings me to this place: what was the objective of the artful Bharrat Jagdeo from its inception? Was it to prove that there was a failure of people with funds? I don’t think so. It was to bring the operations of IDPADA-G to a dead stop. It was by doing so by any means possible, regardless of how devious and odious. It is what IDPADA-G lives with, and lots of damage done. Even the Attorney General, and other defenders of what happened, look like soldiers having arms with no ammunition. They either put up a brave front or make themselves small, with silence their best ally.
Meanwhile, the mental conniver of this disgrace against a people in Guyana is off to his next orchestration and manipulation. Meanwhile, the AG is a stick in the mud. Meanwhile, His Excellency is rummaging through his congested calendar. To meet or not to meet with IDPADA-G is his challenge. This is the same President, who has this one-track mind about something called ‘One Guyana’, and has persuaded himself that his vision is so pure that it can only have one approach. Meaning, employing that which crushes anyone standing in his government’s way. The President may comfort himself that he is slick, but all that he succeeds in doing is adding more toxins into an already highly toxic environment. I respectfully alert the President about what none of his people have the…. Or the courage, to tell him: He feeds the embers that simmers. In this society, Guyanese may forget many things. These include who they are, where is their place, how they should be, and what ought to be their aspirations. But there is one thing that Guyanese never forget. They never forget racial degradations; they forever remember racial insults.
What brother Jagdeo did to IDPADA-G, with docile assistance from the Attorney General, and as is confirmed with each delay from the President also, was to use the law to besmirch opponents and political obstacles. The collateral damage has had a racial flavor, the anguished experience has found a base in race. Even those that run to take the PPP Government’s side in this troubled development cringe at the cravenness of their racial betrayal.
Now, matters between the PPP and IDPADA-G are suspended somewhere between nowhere and nothing. Reason has no place, and conversation is out of the question. Even the President keeps his distance, despite mutterings indicating earlier willingness. The situation, therefore still stands unaddressed. What began in the head of Dr. Jagdeo as an action to break the back of IDPADA-G, and splinter it into fragments, has failed. His agenda to have wounded survivors indebted, and under yoke and whip, has produced more clarity about the dirty.
Something tells me that more gasoline has been poured. These things add up, people take note. They bend, or they blow up.
