Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo is the citizen, the leader holding the office of Vice President in Guyana. There could not have been found a more well-named, well-suited, and better wellspring of duty and job for Brother Jagdeo. I must watch myself, as brotherhood can rub off, and that leads anywhere, and results in anything; that has to do with darkness; things with an intimate relationship with the dangerous and deadly. From the mouth of the man Jagdeo himself came some fateful words. It is that some things must “go to the grave.” This is the world that the former president has customized for himself, and for the affairs of Guyana: the grave. He digs a bigger one for this country daily, and this is not from today only, but from way back then.
Over two decades later, and a graveyard, many of them, with unstilled spirits by the hundreds, and there are those secrets that must be buried. Dr. Jagdeo has decided that what is in his head, what the Guyanese people from all walks need to know, are better off buried in the secret grave that he has made and that he guards with ferocious viciousness. Like Cerberus, the dog of Roman lore, Dr. Jagdeo guards the gates, so that all are barred from the truths of all that happened during a most turbulent, most bloodstained time, in Guyana’s political and racial history.
If Dr. Jagdeo does not trust himself to speak openly and completely about that 20-plus years later, then I submit that there are few issues, if any at all, about which he could speak with courage, clarity, and confidence. What has he to hide, other than himself, perhaps? If his own hands are free from the stain and stench of blood, the blood of many, then he should have the conviction and character to step into the light and speak to it. Truth is not about inference for his partisans. Truth is not about titillating morsels of innuendoes for his tribe that shed no insight and only leave an anxious nation even more concerned and disturbed about what really took place. Who were the intellectual authors behind sweeping national carnage, and whose directions guided the hands of others to grisly deeds?
Back then, a now-deceased Minister of Home Affairs spoke of “national security” considerations. Also, the army had its Military Criminal Intelligence Department headed by Major Omar Khan, an officer of proven devotion, and one known to take his duties seriously, if not severely. It is the same Omar Khan, who is now the Chief of Staff of the Guyana Defense Force. It is a vote of faith, but yet Dr. Jagdeo speaks of ‘sterilized reports,’ and intelligence failure.
During that close to seven-year reign of terror, hundreds from one segment of Guyana’s population died in mostly hails of bullets. His own people suffered similar fates. Those sounds cannot be silenced; neither of the guns nor of the fallen victims nor of the murky circumstances in which matters unfolded, but which the well-titled Vice President is doggedly driven to bury now, or to keep buried when they should not. He has his own Official Secrets Act; in fact, he is the Act in the length of its clock, which does not run out of time. His secrets are so secure that they are forever buried in the deepest recesses of the graves that have become the mind of this former President.
This is the man, and this is the government that is about transparency and accountability. I don’t think that there is a single Guyanese, who does not have a serious interest in knowing the fullest details about a time of widespread terror, a swath of unequaled horror. Redact as it pleases to protect, but share some details. National security sounds pitiful; security apparatus failure is worse still. Twenty years later, who isn’t retired is dead. Twenty years and more later, those who have not retreated into the haze, have disappeared into the vastness outside of Guyana. The security apparatus, the security network, casts a wide but also tailored net. It is not a puzzle, but the cunning of Dr. Jagdeo, the kind of potions and notions that he dispenses to the audiences that he has in mind, and with sowing subtle fear and intimidation ever much on his mind.
For what is under the span of the umbrella of the national security and intelligence network, if not the Guyana Defense Force, the Guyana Police Force, and the Guyana spy agencies, known and unknown. And who are the ones in and out of uniform that form the bulk of the personnel under those sprawling entities of safety and security? I should not have to identify a color, or ethnicity, or the assumed politics of both. Whatever Bharrat Jagdeo may be, there must be assurance of this: he may play at being dim, but he is not dumb. He will always play a good game of sincerity, but study him, and he is an open book of what is slippery. Drop a colored (race) pill in the water, and watch in fascination as it dissolves, spreads, and brings flinching, and leads to Guyanese watching at one another differently.
This is the grave that festers inside of Jagdeo’s skull, and which odors he releases on carefully selected occasions. His own people died in a rain of steel, and this national leader is pleased to play games about what has to “go to the grave.” Guyanese have long heard of The Walking Dead. They are now privy to looking at an open grave. It is occupied by only one body. Identify who that one national figure is. Think of what is concealed.
