By GHK Lall- It is my difficult job to inform President Ali that he has it all wrong. Wrong to think that the death of a child can be treated like just another commodity. Wrong to conclude that a mystery death, an untimely one, is a time to hurry to close books (and mind) and move on.
No! Excellency Ali! No! Today I use the advantage of age and seek to extend a helping hand to a brother giving the appearance of trying to do the right thing in Adrianna Younge’s death and making a mess of matters. For those who see what I share as a lesson for a leader, for all leaders, the choice is theirs.
The death of a child in the worst of circumstances, Mr. President, is the wrong time to rush over, paper over. It is wrong to seek the distance of space, time, cover. Wrong when there are all manner of unknowns. Wrong when there were the corruptions that diminished a death. Wrong when there were attempts at coverups that tried to conceal her passing. Wrong when there were spins about the disappearance of Adriana that added to the unjustness of her demise. I believe that some of those nefarious efforts are still ongoing, but with greater care exercised.
The president may have a world of bigger things on his mind and bigger things on his hands, but this is as big as they come, due to its potential to unleash roiling energies. There is what is being closely watched, what could spiral into the unknown. Whatever Pres. Ali has before him, this is where he must be at his best.
It is wrong to treat the death of this child as another tick-the-box moment, one where the page can be turned, and one where there is the unseeming haste to move on. I can overlook Pres. Ali getting so worked up over the continued focus on Adrianna Younge’s death that his tongue got tangled and his enunciation got somewhat disoriented.
The president came close to labour with his construction of “belabel” when I am sure that he meant belabor. If the death of this child has to be belabored, then so be it. For she is, and her death is, and the respect for her departure is, a stark confluence of the wrongs (the dark evils) that have proliferated on Excellency Ali’s watch. As much as he may wish to run past this, it sticks to him like glue. On this occasion, his known skills at shedding aged skin are of limited value.
The president and his cohort are sure to disagree, but that is not recognized as a red light by me. Whatever he said about how much he did in all that he could have done, he has much more to do. He hasn’t even chipped the cement. President Ali needs to arrive at a place, and his guidance counselors should see to it that he gets there in the shortest time. The first is that this is more than the death of a child.
This is more than the time spent on sorting through the muddles that have added further hurts to her death. This is more than the reputation of his government and his leadership that is involved. This is about a whole society watching and weighing every development related to this child’s death, and where their conclusions lead them. Those almost never take out of the quicksand and to the blessed relief of higher ground.
To Pres. Ali I offer some little words of goodwill. The death of Adrianna Younge should be a catalyst for the changes that are so direly needed in this country. Direly needed for so long, but denied and damned for so long. Therefore, no amount of time spent, and all the doing what could have been done, means nothing. There is too much in the heads of Guyanese, and too much underfoot that cannot be squeezed out of existence.
The death of this young child can serve as a cathartic moment for this country. But only if Pres. Ali displays the quality of leadership that has eluded him from the inception, or he has disowned to so much devastation to Guyanese, from coming to the fullest flower. The president must lead from the front, not from the side, or the side of his mouth.
Mr. President: the death of this child, this little girl, this now haloed Guyanese spirit, is not, cannot be, and must not degrade to another business-as-usual moment. This is not business. This is about the quality of Guyanese life. This has to be about leadership at its finest when the times are the grimmest.
Don’t rush the brush, Mr. Ali. For that is when Guyanese will end up with a brush job, like they have so many times before. Adrianna Younge deserves better. Her grieving family is due more. And so are all Guyanese. In a time when a child is unburied, President Ali must be unhurried, a beacon of inspiration. Sadly, he has not been able to find that in himself, when it is most needed.
