By GHK Lall- Excellency Ali is at it again. From the mind of Ali comes this first beauty: His One Guyana vision is not political. Also, from his grand presidential head floats this deformity: protesting for access to info is political. Is Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali, president of Guyana, the smartest man in the room? Or is he living in an upside-down world, one of those strange characters, straight out of Alice in Wonderland?
In the fantasy world inhabited by Irfaan Ali, he has a monopoly on what is political, and what is not. Crazier things, I have heard, but what the president puts out, is quickly running out of competition. I am trying my best not to prescribe the loony bin for the president, but he has to give me some help to avoid that fate.
Not because President Ali intones that One Guyana is not political that it is so, and that is the end of the matter. I would love to say I believe that One Guyana is genuine, but I cannot. Not when the PPP Government delivers the divisive and non-inclusive in Guyana. There was Mr. Vincent Alexander at the UN, and now deliberately divided Guyana hangs from the rafters of the world.
President Ali could have used his leadership powers and, with good reason, reversed the malicious and venomous actions taken against an African Guyanese organisation (IDPADA-G), but was frozen into inaction. Instead of One Guyana, the president presided over one divided by two. For convenience, the indigenous has been left out of this contribution. I recognize a wrong, but that will be righted.
My point is that it is wonderful for President Ali to palaver about One Guyana, but he has to practice it, see to it that his power people live it. He can pontificate to his heart’s desire about how One Guyana is not political, but the record boos him, the trail of disastrous actions reeks of what mocks him. One Guyana chipped away, sloughed off, peeled away, ground down. Mocha. Linden. IDPADA-G. Public Service. Teachers. Linden again.
I have a few simple recommendations for Guyana’s head of state. If he wants to keep his head, he is best advised to use it sensibly. Not too smartly or cleverly; just sensibly. Recommendation number two: since President Ali pretends, prefers to be seen, as saintly with his One Guyana, then he must be holy with it.
Yes, that’s how sacred and precious it must become to him. Recommendation number three: if he continues in his usual tone challenged manner, then his One Guyana would be seen for what it is deep down. Nothing but a contraption that has become a contradiction. A political one. The president and his people should know by now that I will not swallow blindly, in the manner of his PPP faithful, anything that he says.
Both also know that when the reflexive reaction of non-PPP Guyanese seeks to expose his masquerades and symphonies, I go my own way, make up my own mind. COVID-19 vaccines and the Frank Anthony-spearheaded processes (get them). The Ali-Norton meetings on Venezuela amid perils to the homeland (I back them). The Nigel Dharamlall alleged crimes, or Jagdeo’s VICE news spotlight (due process entitlement, presumption of innocence). Consider those, then consider this.
I don’t follow Ali. I don’t follow any crowd, be it a PPP mob, or a PNC posse. So, I can assert frankly and publicly that his One Guyana stinks. Now, if the goal was to tear apart his One Guyana and expose its private parts for the world to see, then what Vincent Alexander delivered at the UN would fade into the mists. For in the One Guyana conception, the One Guyana incubation, and the One Guyana operation, there is that not-so-nuanced, that oh-just-so-suggestive fusion in the name chosen.
That is, One Guyana is for one kind of people. One Guyana is for one kind of voter, one kind of color, one kind of original believer, and one kind of blind follower. To be done with this and dust my feet from it, I repeat that not because President Ali in his self-subscribed wisdom says that One Guyana is not political, that it is so.
In the next breath, the same all-knowing President Ali rocketed to his conclusion on the protests for access to information, as mandated by law. His one-panel judge and one-man jury (himself), denounced the protests as “political.” Using the president’s perspicacity, if protesting for access to info is political, then what qualifies as nonpolitical, if anything at all? By the president’s tortured logic, his Guardians of Democracy (2020, Lima Sands, Letter Kenny) were not political. But today’s fighters for democracy (access to and for info) are.
I take this further. If I stand up and curse Aubrey Norton, in the president’s book that is responsible and outspoken citizenship. But if I got up and criticized the man in charge of Guyana, then that is unpatriotic, even possibly subversive. Obviously, the president does have the weirdest idea of what political is, and a rather slippery and self-serving interpretation of what is nonpolitical.
All that Guyanese want from the commissioner is the equivalent of two front teeth, as in one or two pieces of government paper. President Ali insists that to walk the picket line for that is political. It is from vacuous postures and judgments like these that countries go down in the record books for the wrong reasons, and national leaders are remembered by history in the worst way imaginable. President Ali is fast becoming like a convenience store: he sells everything. From raw sewage to sepsis to sludge.
