Thirty days into his Presidency, Irfaan Ali, foisted into the office on the rubric of nation healing failed to do so.
The pre- election season of simmering tensions, with Social Media’s open call for recipes on how to best divide the country into Indo/Partisan dominated segments, reached boiling point with the grotesque savaging of three Afro Guyanese young men- Darren James and the Henry Cousins , in a sub human mutilation that challenges the humanness of the perpetrators as much as it denied the victims theirs, with a manner of butchery that would make evil envious.
Promises of swift justice and even swifter investigations couched between words like elite, Scotland Yard and Regional Security System, continues to take its time in the slothful manner of political promises made not to be kept, as law lags way behind.
And while Justice took her time to address the demonic savagery of racial strife, another kind of sadism was sitting in the Ali pipeline, waiting to be unleashed on the less prosperous amongst them.
The resurrection of Sugar, which 2nd Third Term vicarious Leader Jagdeo confessed would remain an industry past, if the drainage and irrigation system needed to alleviate coastal flooding was not implemented, became the select carriage on the moving- along train of self-perpetuating governing incompetence.
Imminent failure would be better camouflaged as the fault of squatters.
Never mind that they became a residential community under government by this Party, for as long as they’ve been at the helm….
But no one must ever notice that the integral drainage infrastructure is not happening.
So flushing out Squatters dominated the headlines, as the term itself suggested some rodent infestation that required that inhuman response.
Not so metaphorically, therefore, the act was overseen by none other than the hired King Rat Character, SaseNarine Singh, the fast talking, non agronomist sugar novice, whose character assessment by his bossman, Jagdeo, as a “five time thief, fired from five different places for ‘teefin’ “, should be the tool to account for all expenditure deemed to be used on an industry that will fail without drainage infrastructure…
yet is overseen by a person whose Olympian dexterity in the feature characteristic of PPP governments, overqualified him for the post…by at least 4 times.
And lest we allow our attention spans to wander on to the real issues, there’s a sustained mortar attack on political opponents who are harassed, jailed, released on usurious bail, then re-summoned to address yet another charge that the prosecutor thought would add to the fascism trimmings that this government thrilled the international community with.
Through the hundred days of activity that tore at every thread in the fabric of Western Democracy, US Ambassador Sarah Lynch hunkered down with her democracy –oriented Western peers and never said a word about the unrelenting assault on Human Rights and the Democracy she claimed to champion, as an extension of her great country.
She seemed more preoccupied perfecting her elbow-bump with the felons of an administration her US State Department once spurned but reversed course when, apparently, the political calculation of Trump’s cognitive limitation, added to Marco Rubio’s quest for the Venezuelan vote, multiplied by John Bolton’s thirst to do to Maduro what America failed to do to Chavez ,equaled Trump’s triumph in ‘owning oil’, which he would withhold from Cuba.
Of course that final result was born of the Conservative Right Wing which pilots the OAS but the uni-filter Trump will never know that, if it is presented as a win and for him – along with a sharpie with which he can draw his name underneath a set of words, with too many syllables for him to quite comprehend.
And as the Madam – who never ran short of applause or praise for this Administration that trampled the Democracy she once “championed” -remained comparatively mum on its lack of investigative and prosecutorial “swift justice”, its weaponizing of the State Justice machine to terrorize its political enemies and its role in undermining the rights and freedoms of people, the PPP Government proclaimed a “First Hundred Days” of achievement, more glorious in headlines than in fact, as it unswervingly departs from the ‘norms of Washington’ and how America expects its political children to behave.
But then her vision may be clouded since America’s President is anything but exemplary. And the fascism of the PPP that speaks of ‘All Guyanese’, which by any socio economic yardstick means Indians, and speaks of its ‘All People’ agenda, which systematically excludes Afro Guyanese, is the kind of fascist opportunistic politics of Trump, if we substituted White for Indo.
And with the comfort her departure from Washington norms has infused into the body politic- well of some bodies– they can hardly contain their uninformed exuberance in a declaration that “US Foreign Policy doesn’t change in reference to oil producing nations….” a conversation that will be had another time that will counter and with examples, what the Madam may have ‘inadvertently’ misinformed.
The Jagdeo/Ali Government is, in part, a parable of foreign policy under Trump, who normalized the irreverence of the Presidency with his own acts of TEEFIN from money –masking to donor fund rerouting, curry favoring and nepotizing, for punctuation.
And though Madam may signal diplomatic comfort with characters that didn’t make the cut under previous Administrations, we should remember that failure happened in a better world; in a time when even her flawed democracy stood well above Trump and the grievance politics that took root when hatred was at its highest … after a black President and right when it was popular to caricature a woman because she was so damn accomplished.
The hundred day marker may be more symbolic than not but even the frivolity of symbolism should not be allowed to stand here, especially when the intent to be revisionist includes a ‘paid for’ piece that is patently manufactured.
Living down to expectations, Ali and his government have presided over a torrent of misdeeds and no amount of pictures touting progress or congratulations from the Foreign Community should distract from the drug trafficking that seems to thrive when his Party is in office, or from the continuous firing of non PPP employees that provide the political confetti to celebrate their tyranny.
And if they didn’t make a festival out of spotlighting this first 100 days, warehousing under a canopy of quiet and detachment, the slaughter of the three Black men and its ensuing unrest, an extraordinary range of ills not limited to the midnight roundup of political opponents and the robust revival of the PPP government cottage industry, Drug Running, we would not have been compelled to make sure the spotlight shone on each of these days; the darker ones included.
Madam Ambassador Sarah Ann Lynch may have succeeded in coloring this Administration a purveyor of Democracy and respecter of Human Rights by arcing their failure in both to some imaginary accomplishment, as measured by America.
We’ve long learned that the US’ depth in these pillars is plumbed in what’s in it for them – their hoisting of Jagdeo to the world stage on the absurdity of language like bedrock principles and human rights, good governance and transparency, phrases like “the difference between meddling and practicing good diplomacy”
– like we’re too native to remember what they thought of him before the stars merged the pliable Trump with the electoral Ambitions of Marco Rubio and the salivating desire of Bolton to get, in Venezuela, just one more regime overthrow…like in the old days.
Many of us have long held that Democracy in Guyana would have to be the product of its internal struggles; overcoming the stranglehold of racialized politics and the personality cults of Party leaders, that its Democracy must come from inside, cannot be outsourced.
And now that Trump, has torn off the dress of Lady Democracy with practiced prowess, causing victims of Western strong -arming to ask Who’s the Banana Republic Now , it is easier to see how these terms are selectively applied for strategic outcomes…with assists from Think Tanks to remake rogue states into Western images. Their data history shows Jagdeo as a rogue character who prefers fidelity to propriety, lacking “the legitimacy to bring change” by virtue of his dedication to racial division.
So Guyana, not for its betterment, got the old guard.
A significant tangent to the 100 day installation of Guyana’s Access Government is that Trump has been booted, like dictators are when elections are free of US interference.
A new Administration will present a reset option that Guyana’s Opposition may be considering now.
It may involve considering Russia’s assistance in diverting Maduro’s oil to Asia to give Trump’s sanctions the middle finger. China too, may be on the check list for propping up Venezuela, where it it has 20 billion in outstanding loans and a parasitic relationship with Guyana which may guarantee it backdoor access to Venezuela , should there be an eventuality.
And as a national service, I’ll petition that we send Madam Lynch to Venezuela where her ‘Noisy Democracy’ is needed to remove a dictator, not install one, as has happened in Guyana.
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