The President Should Resign- GHK Lall

Interesting the issues that nettle the once venerable Office of the President (OP).  The president should resign.  The call unnerved.  I am going places, but given how Guyana ‘s highest office has been degraded, there’s recoiling at featuring there.

A citizen who once saw nothing wrong in what LFS Burnham did to Guyanese, now sees the same in the incumbent.  No wrongs.  No failings.  If Burnham, then any.  Some can freely sell their virtues; though enriching, it’s still cheapening.  Thus, there’s worming and slithering about for evidence; a serpentine crawl via banana peels remade into roller-skates.  Some upscaling is recommended.  Produce the evidence.  I usually reject dealing with those who disrespect themselves: unworthy of time, attention.  Today, exception is made.

For the first piece of evidence, I recommend social media’s archives; a good memory aid.  Records neither erased or set afire.  Deliberately, accidentally, or conveniently.  Unable to recall doesn’t mean unable to retrieve.  It’s a good starting point  The second piece is more qualitative.  It encompasses fitness for that office that stands at Guyana’s apex.  I call it a confluence of the circumstantial, what is not presidential.  Guns smoking.  The president looks like tainted goods.

Why is the president-any president or a prime minister, or even a minister-that close to anything of such a nature?  Those are his fingerprints, aren’t they, as alleged?  I said what I said about the fallibility of human recall, and I say it again for the public record: it can be genuine.  And, it can also be when circumstances so demand a sanctuary rushed to for the comfort and distance of immunity.

Third, when national leaders set certain standards, are not part of certain expectations, then the trickier issues of the day are kept far away from them.  Citizens, even close friends, donors, supporters, think twice.  There is one thought.  Not him!  Or, in domestic English: caaan risk goin’ to dah maan, nah fuh sumting like dis.

Fourth, when the opposite seems to be the practice, with the presidential door probably left ajar or held wide open, those who matter feel comfortable entering, and stating their business.  Or seize for themselves the right to send their texts for presidential attention.  To state differently, the texts in and of themselves, as alleged, tell of familiarity with some custom and practice.  Hence, I don’t know how anyone with any standards can disagree, can stoop so low as to ask: where’s the evidence?

My concern, the challenge for all Guyanese, is how many more approached the esteemed Office of the President at its pyramid’s peak, with issues of like kind?  Before and since?  When a donor, a partner, in what is now this Tax-gate obscenity has that degree of access, that casualness of association, that intimacy of relationship, to think of what repulses honest Guyanese, and then engage in that exchange, what does that say?  Where does that leave everyone, from the highest to the lowest?  No spinning, fulminating, defending can water those down, wish them away.

Fifth, when OP is respected, none has to shelter in not recalling.  Or the number is public.  Or thousands beseech.  None has to defend.  Because the calling, honour, of the presidency were all involved, responses had to be crystal: don’t come here with matters like those.  Deal with the GRA.  I appreciate, however, that Guyana works differently.

Still, a president that respects that office, respects the people, respects what they placed in his hands, and respects himself, is sensible (should be honorable enough) not ever to be around this unholy mess.  He had to stop that dead.  Hard talk.  Hard stance.  Hard truth.  Someone in OP should summon the courage to tell him those.  Tell him that’s my position, and his should be higher.

Sixth, the evidence flares in the amount foregone.  How many people in Guyana can make that happen, including those at the GRA?  And, how only now there is this staggering amount suddenly recalled, demanded.  For last, I haven’t heard of one public servant, senior or junior, called to the carpet and tarred publicly with: how the hell did this happen, who is responsible for, had a hand in, this billion-dollar caper?  Where does this lead, tier up?  By process of elimination or logic for almost a billion in taxes?

This is not the standards of salesmen or propagandists.  But of leadership ethics.  Of personal decency and insulation.  Presidents who value their reputation shudder at the mere mention of their names in matters like this tax one (others left unmentioned).  The question for Guyanese is this.  What is worse: the alleged involvement itself and the cost to the treasury, or the appearance of a sitting president’s name dredged out of the OP’s cesspool?  For evidence, simply scan the environment, connect the dots.  Resign!  Resign!