By GHK Lall- Of course, President Ali would take offense with the scorching conclusions of the latest Transparency International (Transparency) report on the state of the state in Guyana. If any citizen was expecting a different reaction from His Excellency, they are either too hopeful or too lost for anything to matter.
Anything-any peep, any slight, any development-that call his imaginary ‘clean governance’ into question is automatically suspect. That is, “politically biased” flawed, derelict. For once, the president is transparent; but is he accounting for the gaping holes that cannot be covered over by his hollow denials, his self-serving platitudes.
A long-time ago, the same President Ali said with a straight face that he was all for “constructive criticism”. The contradiction that is a challenge that is when has the esteemed Ali ever been receptive for any kind of criticism, constructive, accurate, honest, or otherwise?
In even the shakiest of democracies, the president should know, there are only so many who will tell him what he wants to hear. When President Ali desires everyone to parrot to him everything he desires to hear about his leadership and government, he immerses himself in either a crisis or the outlines of a comic book character.
Who did Transparency consult, poll, obtain its fieldwork details? The president had a problem there. It seems that surveys and polls done here that present the true realities of Guyana (the unwanted), help the PPP Government and president get bent out of shape. Interestingly, when Excellency Ali is extolled as being erudite, virtuous, and inspiring, there is no pushback. No questions are asked of the quality of that detail, nor from whom they were gathered.
When the World Bank reported to two-fifths to one half of Guyanese are living on GY$1100 a day, the president took a leave of absence. Why not object then, inquire about the basis for that stat? When the former American Ambassador, Excellency Sarah Ann Lynch called for equitable distribution of the wealth of Guyana, that all Guyanese should share in the joy, the inference, the recommendation, was that much more could be done in that regard.
President Ali didn’t take public umbrage; nor did he find fault with the ambassador’s posture, which was a subtle message from the US government. It was more than the knowledge gleaned from her official position. Back then, President Irfaan took a much-needed Facebook sabbatical.
Today, the learned president dismisses Transparency as a group whose work has been disparaged in other jurisdictions. It would be helpful to his position if the president shared the results of his government’s investigation of Transparency’s flawed methodology, suspect processes, dubious factfinding, and overall meritless conclusions. Hang Transparency publicly.
The main gripe of President Ali has to do with “political biases.” Fair enough. But he seems supremely confident that some of his own disgruntled people have kept their seal of silence, maintained the secrecies of his government’s incestuous partnerships, activities. Since nobody has the courage to inform the president, I do him the favour.
His own name features powerfully and persuasively from his own people (his own people) regarding some of the troubling issues in Guyana. One word is enough: front. The people who use that word are as diehard PPP as they come. I humbly suggest that President Ali set the record straight with them.
I repeat: they are neither PNC nor AFC people; nor people like me. I close the circle: Transparency didn’t need to speak to political opponents of either himself or his government. The environment is saturated: the kingpins (elites) in politics and business who rip-off this country, hold a gun to the head of lesser Guyanese. Captive was the word used.
Local reality confirms this. Who has the political power, and has been cavalier in its deployment, with voracious financial harvests banked? The PPP Government’s name matches requirements, owns the monopoly. It is the political elite, by measurement of the environment, by process of reduction.
Who has the deep-pockets to buy access, to buy political influence, to buy corporate welfare, thanks to a willing, partnering State? Guyana’s well-positioned business elite stands tall, stands alone. There has been no competition for that elevated platform. Other than those spawned and delivered by the political elite, which is the government. And, as I think, some silent partners in the opposition ranks.
President Ali has every right to defend. He should take as well-meaning counsel, not call ridicule upon himself when he defends. The evidence is there in plain sight: the corruptions, the malfeasances, the collaborations, the whole kit and kaboodle encompassing kith and kinsmen. And other colourful characters.
I write not of driver’s license corruption. I speak to billion-dollar dealings that are so dirty that that they have to be locked away in airtight vaults. Still, the scents escape. Guyanese wade through the smells: they are not aromatic. Try stench.
Corruption is so thick that Guyanese collide with it, every corner they turn, every step they climb, almost every room or office they enter. Government ones. The business elite has the luxury of operating in stealth conditions, not subject to intense scrutiny by those who vote.
President Ali condemns. I channel his attention. Check, sir, on the wealth accumulations of comrades; start with the cabinet. It helps to look inward. Pre-oil and in the early stages of oil (2020 to today), check everybody who are the owners-secret or through surrogates-of new tracts of real estate, trophies of a certain type of success, and who can’t give an accounting of their hauls.
I gently point President Ali in the direction of the reverse Robin Hood policies and practices of his PPP Government, and who the beneficiaries are. I rest with this for the president’s dessert: poor people don’t have elites.
