By GHK Lall- First, the US government was all principle, honour, and glory. There is a problem, many considerable ones, with the vision of the man from We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) being in parliament and being privy to any highly confidential information shared on a government-to-government arrangement. I would, too.
Then, the next word from the US government was that it has found ways to work with sanctioned individuals from other parts of the world, so it is no longer such a big deal to deal with Mohamed I. Whether in parliament, poor house or penitentiary, it didn’t matter. Uncle Sam had it covered. From all indications, a couple of commercial banks in Guyana weren’t copied in that circular from the State Dept. I think it was less of Americans slacking off, and more of Guyanese falling down on the job, due to fearing their own shadows. Ever hear of jumbie frikken other jumbie? Well, that is the Guyana banking story, a section of it.
Next, when sanctions made its own giant step to indictments and charges, fun stuff happened. More about what was strange than anything laughable. PPP Permanent Secretary, Ms. Mae Toussaint Thomas fell from the steps of the sanctions gallows and has never been seen or heard from since. It’s widely known that Donald Trump perfected the art of wheeling-and-dealing, long before his run for US president.
His prior efforts and engagements were what New York Yankees (not the onetime baseball super team) describe as milk runs. In Guyanese, Mr. Trump’s previous dealings were a mere warmup for doing big deals in the White House. Donald Trump is expected, but Secretary Marco Rubio into the kind of wheeling-and-dealing that freed the Hon. Mae Thomas and left the Mohamed tag team to wrestle on their own? Nosir! Not he!
Pam Bondi who got her feet swept from under her, and her teeth knocked out, maybe. But not Marco Rubio tying that kind of bundle with the PPP. Did Thomas turn witness for the prosecution, a real-life one, not a cinematic one? Though asked before, it is worth asking again: what did the PPP Govt of Ali-Jagdeo-Nandlall relinquish to spring their principled and once (probably still) powerful lady friend? What’s going on? I am not Motown’s Marvin Gaye, but what’s really going on with the men now under the gun of extradition proceedings? I will leave the verbal weapon used in place, since this not Motown, but downtown Georgetown.
In aggregate, the sanctions were hair-raising, the indictments and charges breathtaking, so the very best in honesty had to be in action, when two gold smugglers, tax evaders, and money launderers (as alleged) were fighting for their lives, hanging by a thread. The Mae Thomas missing link raises more than questions. It puts on the radar, and squeezes under the microscope, the issue of whether this whole damn thing is a fix and nothing but one big patented American and PPP farce. I know about American gangsters and American Graffiti, but this is the first encounter with a State Dept and Dept of Justice American Farce. There’s always a first time, especially for an amateur like me.
Now the rage centers on one word. Extradition! Extradition! Extradition! Like some broken record, or the Mohameds’s Pearl Harbor ordeal. Treachery smells strongly. I wonder what Guyana’s Attorney General, Anil Nandlall has to offer on all this. A man as self-celebrating as he couldn’t have joined a monastery, taken vows of silence. Regardless, US courts are waiting, and US booking agents stand ready.
US Ambassador to Guyana, Excellency Nicole D. Theriot, has all but danced on the table fully dressed with that extradition baby as a partner. She went from sharp to soothing, when this issue first broke out. Then from strength to strength ever since, depending on the cables received from Washington. The news is not so inspiring for the Mohameds: Uncle Sam is gonna get you, suckers. Learn not to play with politicians and their games. Learn to leave politics to the pros (and perverted).
For Guyanese longing for the suspense to end, here it comes. In considering all this, two questions are raised. Who is behaving like Judas and who is making Guyanese into a jackass? To take another liberty with that Dave Martins’ classic: who is the donkey and who is the monkey in all this?
