‘Moon duz run til day ketch am’ is an old Guyanese saying. The first glimpses of the day have caught up with the PPP Government. It was the UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC), through a line of questioning, that exposed the PPP Government as operating like a criminal enterprise. A political party and a national government that stands as a hemispheric criminal enterprise is of the wrong kind of distinction. From Guyanese proverb to scriptural truth, there is one eternal unchallengeable fact: nothing stays concealed beyond its time. It was not one thing, one reckoning asked for about malfeasance in office, but many that had to do with the misuse and abuse of power.
The UNHRC inquirers wanted to know why allegations of corruption against the incorruptible (as claimed by the PPP) Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo never got off the ground, stalled there. People had no interest in doing anything, so the police were only too glad to take an extended holiday. Allegations of corruptions directed at a figure of the standing of a former head of state were prematurely declared dead and just as rapidly buried. Oh! The stench then. Ah! The untimely and inconvenient reminder now comes. The world was tuned in, and what was local is now international. Again. The call was for a thorough international investigation into the allegations of corruption, but that mail never left the Post Office, such a call for credible help was never initiated.
In his usual manner, President Ali danced his version of a jig, sang his style of jive. Somebody somewhere in America was not impressed, didn’t fall for what is now the customary guile. All things considered, it might have been better for Jagdeo and Guyana if that investigation into the corruption allegations against him was done when this whole sordid and sick business first bludgeoned the consciousness of Guyanese. The lessons are that those who duck at first risk getting drowned later along the road.
Jagdeo has his troubles, and they are not going away. His troubles are the PPP Government troubles and they introduce a sinking feeling. The sensation is there. Ms. Gail Texeira tried her best but that only made matters worse. Look at how an honest and honorable Guyanese, a man and scientist of the caliber of Dr. Vincent Adams, was fed to the wolves. He was involved in the signing of the 2016 Exxon contract. Mouth open, and fake truths jump out. It was a story by Ms. Texeira that had the scales of a snake and the toxins too. The dirtiness and ugliness of the PPP are now dangling like long unwashed laundry across the globe. Vincent Adams picked up his pen and a blatant falsehood tumbled on its head.
It was a bad hair day for Ms. Teixeira, with her hair catching fire. Somebody should report that to the police, so that she can be saved from herself. Yes, this most gallant of female MPs was given the heavy lifting by the PPP top guns to save their own skin. Good going Gail; go down with the ship. Just get the story straight; incidentally, it only comes from long association with straightness. When a government’s standing practice is to weave tangled webs, then those who make a living deceiving (and slandering) get their day before the court of world opinion. The UNHRC was just such a frightening animal.
Part of the webs of deception, as told by the PPP Government and its leading spokespeople, has to do with an evenhanded distribution of the nation’s oil wealth. I can marshal an army of those who can attest to the uneven distribution of the people’s patrimony. It has been glaring, racist and, I shall advance, even criminal in calculation and intent. The cream and many in the party’s upper networks have collected more than their share of the oil wealth that belongs to all Guyanese. They have cause to celebrate. Rather wretchedly, the other side of the political equation in Guyana questions whether its member will ever get to share in their inheritance. Under current conditions and the political culture of party, government, and leaders, the outlook is grim.
The PPP Government may comfort itself that it has succeeded to some extent in snuffing out the dissenting voices that highlight these discriminatory practices in the local environment. But the more that it wastes time trying to conceal its subtle and blatant discriminations (money, contracts, inclusion, participation, and so forth), the more they end up in places where the lies and clumsy sales pitch (police, Vincent Adams, equity) are stripped and hung out to dry before a disturbed world. There were the UNHRC people. It would be interesting to learn of the spins that the party’s propagandists and pundits (all well taken deva of with oil favors), and the government itself, decide to put on the litany of wrongdoing delivered by a corrupt government machinery and a sleazy leadership cabal.
From deceptions to discriminations to the dead from extrajudicial killings to the character assassinations to the media minefield, the UNHRC tarred the PPP Government. The lady tried, but hers was a losing hand: dirty tricks, dirty deeds, dirty government, dirty people. The independent media and individual dissenting commentators can be picked apart and lynched. Who is there in Guyana to cutdown the PPP Government and its intellectual authors and goon squads from the tall tree on which they have hanged themselves?
I repeat something placed in before the Guyanese people before. What Guyanese live with today is not a government but a gang of gangsters. For the most part, what Guyanese have for leaders today are nothing but out of control lunatics, pathological liars, unreconstructed racists, and political sadists. The UNHRC exposed all this and more in one fell swoop. Unless stopped, this PPP Government will drown Guyana with it as its long descent begins.