By GHK Lall- Guyanese everywhere: stop and stay still. Watch and listen. Study and absorb. Then appreciate what is happening, how this country is hung on a tall tree before all the world. It’s the Mohamed Irfaan Ali and Azruddin Mohamed Show. A battle for any edge in a fight for moral supremacy, A sickness, it is. A national disgrace, unlike any other. Try to grasp fully what has unfolded publicly.
This is the head of state and head of the opposition in Guyana going head-to-head in efforts to tear off each other’s head. What was never seen nor heard before makes its way into the public domain. Accusations and counteraccusations in sprawling, damaging, degrading efforts to bring down each other.
Destroy each other. From the Opposition Head’s side: claims of massive corruption, disclosures that farm and placed on global display. All that was hidden from sight: fish and fowl, cattle and other creatures lower to the ground. Land and lots of it. And these represent only a little glimpse, according to Azruddin Mohamed.
In response, Guyana’s head-of-state had his own list of accusations and counteraccusations: kidnapping and robbery. Torture and murder. My Lord, my God! Indeed, all that is concealed comes to light. Were those crimes, as alleged [and leveled], by two Guyanese leaders of the utmost national significance against each other the end? Or merely the beginning of the beginning of the scripts now brandished? Now seeping into, then saturating all over, the national consciousness.
Fellow Guyanese: this circus, this national humiliation, is not of Azruddin Mohamed pelting bricks and knackin, and Mohamed Irfaan Ali hurling his own stones and knackin back. It is not. It is more. It is of Guyana’s president and Guyana’s Leader of the Opposition, the very architecture of leadership and governance in this country who are mauling each other with intent to maim. And, ultimately, to assassinate each other’s character. To drop the other with the hardest, sharpest, lowest, thrusts and blows. Fellow citizens, this is what governance and leadership have deteriorated to in Guyana.
Fellow Guyanese (and fellow Americans): ponder this. Mr. Manzoor Nadir, Hon Speaker of Guyana’s National Assembly, in his best protective posture, banned the word “corruption” from that hallowed space. Corruption is not to be said, not heard. Nor written and presented in the most esteemed house of the people. On the pain of sanctions. In the terror of condemnations, then temporary expulsions.
He succeeded in quieting the storm with his ban in firm control. But study how that clever bottleneck led to intolerable pressures building up elsewhere, then blowing up in the face of president, opposition leader, and all Guyana. Are Americans and Europeans still waxing rhetorically and brightly about democracy, parliamentary democracy, and integrity in governance? About who and what is trustworthy?
Fellow Guyanese: I point to the Hon Attorney General, Mr. Anil Nandalal. A general and a senior counsel, is Mr. Nandalal. One who has his moments, a luminary who has much to say. So, he thinks. The rule of law and respect for law and a country of laws and not men. So, he pontificates. Now comes Excellency Ali spilling the beans about murder, kidnapping, torture, robbery (and blackmail).
Not simple misdemeanors. But each one a felony of particular severity. Mr. Nandalal would do well to share insights on those. Why only now? And, to employ Pres Ali’s own language: the man Mohamed “accused” of all those felonies. Where did all of those languish and why? The probes that should have intensified (but never were). The exposures that should have surfaced (but never did). The charges that should have arisen (but never came about).
Who covered for whom? Who condoned whom? And, now, who comes out swinging with bundles of crimes, allegedly committed? With those as contexts, what law, what rule, what kind of men? The attorney general should do himself two favors. Remove his headphones. To listen to himself. Next, peel of his mask. So, he can see himself, in the way that Guyanese see him. See if he can still admire himself in the mirror.
From black sheep to black arts. From cattle to crimes. From special species of shrimp to what savages the psyche of every citizen, and Guyana itself. The most watched, most talked about, Republic in the world, now reduced to an explosive mass of noise. About who is a criminal. Then who is the bigger one. Last, who has the longer, dirtier history. I behold a circus draped into the garb of a spectacle, one that is now a serial crime epic. This is not of the gaff of the corner shop or the grogshop. This is of Guyana’s president and opposition leader goring each other publicly, with blood spilling all over.
