By GHK Lall- There is compelling evidence that the presidency has descended to the level of low comedy in this country. Except that few are the Guyanese who find anything funny about what is happening in the light of day. It was the great American jurist, Louis Brandeis, who made this unforgettable observation: “sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” It is also giving Guyana’s Pres. Ali a powerful itch.
He is clawing at himself (and the air). A fancy vehicle arrives in this country, and there was His Excellency seemingly acting as though he relinquished his high presidential office and operating as an influential custom broker hustling to satisfy a demanding customer.
This is what I make of the exchanges published by the new presidential candidate, claiming to be a copy of communications with Dr. Ali.The unbelievable: $50 million or $25 million? Is this what this country has come to, degraded?
For there was the national leader embroiled in a bitter Facebook brawl over a luxury chariot and the proper duty, as though Maduro and Venezuela, Exxon and oil, hungry people and poverty are secondary. The young fella didn’t escalate vehicles and duty matters to the president because the tax people were overcharging him. It was the other way around: how much to pay the GRA.
Unknowingly or uncaringly, what Pres. Ali had before him five years ago was a car bomb. Even if the president wasn’t too wise to the dangers of getting overly close to such innocent looking developments, caution was highly required. Involvement would be unpresidential, gives the impression of unseemly dabbling with the unscrupulous. Don’t go near that rat trap.
Give self the insulation of space, of clean hands. From the exchanges, such were nonexistent. Now a sitting president resorts to dealing in white rabbits, red herrings, and pink elephants. He should have been a mass hallucinator.
HE prioritised a phone number; how he is a listener, a helper. Flatter than a pool table. Then, the mask went on: “we.” Seems like the GRA just got undesired inclusion, hauled into the mud. Red herrings one and two. Next, there was the unbecoming. A president gyrating about invoices, valuations, and dollars due. A national leader shouldn’t play at the magician (white rabbits to lull Guyanese to sleep). Bluntly, the president is using “phone number” and “we” and “invoices” to wiggle out of a sticky situation.
Invoices and valuations are the business of taxman, Godfrey Statia, whose business was being negotiated upstairs. This is what happens when government business is handled as though it’s private business, the wheeling-and-dealing that goes on in private clubs. An exclusive one in Guyana: membership by invitation only. Quick aside: I saw a caption that said Pres. Ali flies close to the sun. Insightful. More accurately, Pres. Ali thinks that he is the sun itself. Or, when in a humbler frame of mind, that he is some Egyptian sun god reincarnated as a gift to Guyana.
There are a number of disturbing truths that must be faced straight up. First, this is what happens when frens bruk up. The winds are fouled. Second, this is how embodying basic principles, standing for standards, separating the political from the commercial, excluding the personal from the governmental, and prioritizing self-respect don’t matter anymore.
Third, when government is groomed to operate in a certain manner, it is made to look cheap. Fourth, this is how norms are routinely violated, turned upside down. Fifth, this is confirmation of saying one thing in public, and doing the opposite in the dark. Sixth, this is the sickness, squalor, that now saturates most of Guyana, and at every official level. Forget that one about the fish rots from the head. Chronic decay accelerated its withering away. The fish has no head. Or, if it did have one, those Guyanese who still have some speck of honesty, decency and honor about them turn their faces away, and hold their noses.
I have heard about ugly divorce cases, seen some of them at their worst. This one involving high-end vehicles, that drags in one of Guyana’s premier public institutions, and ensnares a sitting government, is the winner by far, the ugliest of all. All the bedroom stories are coming out, and they aren’t pretty. Well, not all, since this is one set of friends, with one issue, involving one breakup.
Guyana is reeling from the battering delivered by what’s a political COVID-19 virus. Contagious and just as deadly. I had said more than once before: the house that the PPP built is so ramshackle that to remove one rotted board is to risk the whole damn tottering structure tumbling down. I am trying to keep at a safe distance. To close this out, I wonder what the diplomatic corps thinks of this $25 million or $50 million caper.
