By GHK Lall- It is disappointing that a bosom friendship turned so sour, so corrosively offensive to the parties. For Guyanese, once they can get past what is the equivalent of Guyana’s Lamborghini Lash and Backlash, it is a revelation of the sorry state of governance, leadership, and politics in Guyana’s 83,000 square. Speaking for myself only, and based on what is alleged, a sitting president and a former president now seemingly have just been hauled headfirst into a frolic of filth.
To give Drs. Ali and Jagdeo, their due, a defense of sorts, I hope that the young presidential candidate spoke rashly, and that in speaking sharply, some of his claims were of a hyperbolic nature. Heavily so.
Both Ali and Jagdeo, it must be said, are looking rather grubby and shabby. I don’t think that their layered, lawyered responses give them the necessary credibility, or helps them to evade their cobwebbed and mildewed and anemic states. Too canned. More of damage control. Less of personal outrage.
Because when certain scorching, spring-loaded, words are released into public waterways, then lots of contamination follows. An entire population is poisoned, whether supporter or believer. These things can’t be done. Or, as my fellow Americans manufactured: the toothpaste cannot be returned to the tube, once it is mushed all over the place. And now with two high-ranking faces smeared unrecognizably.
Will President Ali and Vice President Jagdeo say something, that stirs belief, and not those hollow pro forma statements about the GRA and who has the power and who doesn’t. Guyana doesn’t work that way. Clear the air with the earnest, discard the dubious. The problem is that the air may never be fully cleared now, so fouled it has become. Let us all remember Lady Macbeth from Shakespeare’s work of villainy: “all the perfumes in Arabia will not sweeten this little hand” (Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1). Such are the tides of life.
If all this tax business turns out to have some substance, at the end of the day, there is rich material for a book, for which I have a ready title: the PPP Vagina Monologues. It fits well, doesn’t it?
No business of the people, large or small, should ever be conducted in this shady, sleazy, manner by any government, any leader, in any country. This is what flunkeys and toy boys and gal pals are for, sweetly paid. To set the record: no level of corruption in government is tolerated. But to be realistic, bow to human nature, leaders should be sensible to give themselves some insulation, which one has done very well in other matters.
Recall how then Reagan US National Security Adviser, Vice Admiral John Poindexter marketed “plausible deniability.” I share with former president Jagdeo, what my reaction would have been, should that tax (any such) issue come before me: ‘listen to me carefully: I’ll pretend this one-time that was said wasn’t said. Now get the (four letter word omitted) out of here.’ What is this business of that referral to the president, as in ‘check with him?’ Some overtures must be stopped dead.
Now whoever said what, or did what, just like the man with tax problem, I am ill-equipped to pronounce either way on anyone’s involvement or noninvolvement in this spiraling issue ensnaring high and low and across the board. It’s not just ranking politicians who are under the searchlights, some big people at the Guyana Revenue Authority appear rather shabby, roach-infested. It’s no longer of who knew what when; or of who talked to whom. But of how anyone at any senior level can claim ignorance.
Now I say something without fear of contradiction. Guyana has gone from Su-Gate to Exxon US$214M Audit Gate to Tax-Gate now. I heard that Prado-Ville is a gated community, but never suspected this kind of gate. This is a one gate too many for one country and one government. And, depending how the cookie crumbles with this, too much for one set of leaders to have their names attached to in one go around.
I find myself scrambling around for any lifeline to throw in the direction of President Ali and former president Jagdeo. The best that I am coming up with is a rubber band. It is how shaky they both register, when the alleged tax violator words (theirs, too) are sifted and given reasonable weighing. It is said that best defense is that, sometimes, one must fall on his sword, and plead for the kind consideration of betters.
My recommendation to President Ali is that he must be at his transparent best, this one moment in his tenure. Remember: the truth shall set free. In a real country, real leaders resign, honest governments depart. Again, Guyana doesn’t work that way. As seen, so I call.
