OPINION: Opposition Leader a proven master spinner without equal

Last Updated on Sunday, 9 February 2020, 9:19 by Writer

by GHK Lall

I am astonished that the honorable leader of the opposition—left the intellectuals and academics, the authorities and experts, and the pundits and powers—took to the microphones and cameras mid last week to target me by name in one of his Academy award press conferences. I was hailed a “government spinner.” I am wondering whether to be impressed or amused, since it is some accolade. Of one thing I am certain, though my ancestors must be asking themselves from wherever they are: now what did he go and do (again) that any and all kinds of tortured people have to talk about him?

What could a nobody like me do? What great sin has been committed (aside from political questioning and racial distancing from the destructive), to generate such unease and umbrage from the esteemed maximum leader of the opposition and his large brigade of sycophantic worshippers, to earn this dubious blessing of “government spinner?” Particularly when whatever I say about his friends in Venezuela and their ambitions, and the now public defensive features of the Exxon contract, were presented and advocated long before this administration took office and before Exxon started to dominate the national consciousness with its one-sided contract? Incidentally, it is the same contract that was pledged to be left intact at Patentia by his own handpicked presidential candidate. I must be approaching uncomfortable truths that unnerve.

But I digress, since the focus today is on spinners and spinning. I rebut that there are no better spinners in this country, this region, maybe even in the Kremlin, than the incomparable, irrepressible, and imaginative leader of the opposition and his bleating sheepfold. I am sure that the faceless, soulless men in the Russian politburo, his acknowledged masters, must be awed at their handiwork. I now proceed to submit a few links only in the entrapping evidentiary chain relative to the gilded art of finger-spinning, wrist-spinning, hip-spinning, word-spinning, and truth-spinning, as exemplified by the great and glorious leader of the opposition of Guyana.

There is the small matter of marriage and family – who is the biggest spinner? There is that disaster still haunting about crime-fighting and national security (and hundreds of dead, including Lusignan and one of his own ministers) – now who is the matchless spinner? There was the negligible issue of the national economy claimed to be legit, when it functioned as a laundromat for secret investors, cash pilots, narcotic kingpins and money launderers, and endless financial innovators of the scheming, concealing kind – who is the most productive and prospering spinner now? The great opposition cult leader did publicly embrace the sum of those obviously illegitimate presences as “progress and development;” his own words condemn him, and because of which attempts at pretending to walk the straight nowadays is viewed with immense skepticism; the Americans are not fooled. Government spinner or opposition spinner is too narrow and insufficient for someone of this towering trajectory, for such a stellar figure rises to the peaks as a national spinner, if not a global one of unmatched gloss that speaks volumes.

Oh, I can go on. How about the spinning about sugar and GuySuCo and derivatives and Clico? Who was and is still the best at that guileful art that misrepresents and misleads? And what about Nicil and the Jolly Roger umbrella that it unfurled over national pickings, like that bridge, that hotel, that textile mill, all private and personal, and oh, so secret and scurrilous? What about shortages created at NIS, and the shortages that needy workers cannot fill because they were spun a web that left them hanging, while friends and shadowy partners prospered? There is spinning and then there is spinning, and I must recognize a proven power at this in the grand wizard, the shining star, that is the spinner of a leader of the opposition. I take my hat off but insist on leaving the bowing and kowtowing to others.

After placing this compressed record of the majestic leader of the opposition squarely before the public, it is clear that spinning and being a world class spinner has been the embodiment and absolute extent of the dark and dismal world of the peerless mastermind that is the leader of the opposition. Despite my misgivings, I sympathize with the beloved leader of the opposition, because the only world and life he has ever known has been devoted dedicated to spinning. This erudite leader has held exclusive rights to spinning from his monopolist perch; he is the whole ensemble of a one-man orchestra at full blast furnace temperature and bellow.

As the subject is spinning, I go to lengths to remind the Guyanese that there is the skill of honest spinning, the hard and sometimes unrewarding toil, as practiced by Lance Gibbs, Erappalli Prasanna, and Nathan Lyon. Then, there is the spinning that is about positioning for personal prosperity from the plums of petroleum. I am content with what I have worked hard for, with where I stand.

It says a lot that when a man of no standing (yours truly) can attract such attention and interest and become anathematic to troubled and unhinged men in this country. It says so much of the unsaid stories that are of the realpolitik of Guyana. I wonder what is being prepared to spin post March 2nd, when the house of cards falls apart.

Mr. GHK Lall is a Guyanese author, columnist and former financial analyst on Wall Street.