OPINION: Ali the author, Ali the denier, Ali the evader

Last Updated on Thursday, 3 October 2024, 16:54 by Writer

by GHK Lall

A few warm words of congratulations are extended to President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali for the product of his mind and his pen: a book. From one writer to another, it is good to have another penman as company, a Guyanese born and bred one, is even better. Ali the author does have a clean, glistening sound to it. It is a reverberation that spirals above the mudflats and mud that so often mess with the intellectual underpinnings and horizons of too many fellow countryfolk. With that said for both presidential and public consumption, a few steps are ventured in other directions. Because it is into the new Guyana that can be so bristling, the human rocks are anticipated to be jagged, the manmade receptions to what follows representing nothing but the usual treacherous and perilous shoals.

If author Ali had written a tome that is a true canvas of his rise to the peak of the national political pyramid, some understanding, even hospitality, could have been discovered inside. True canvas means that he collected and conveyed without reservation the curved and undulating road that led him, or pushed him, into the rare elevation of chief tribune, chief problem solver, chief magistrate of Guyana. It has been some precipitous road for Excellency Ali, and a calamitous one for the Guyanese population. If this new book portrayed the dark parts of his path, he would be hailed as a prince of the people. A scrupulous one. One who cut no corner, squeezed no margins, left nothing out. It is immaterial as to whether he had help with his newest presidential pastime, that of a scribbler. It is good that he has the time, better that he found his rhyme. But what Ali the author wrote was not about the nasty underbelly of Guyana’s politics in which he is now helplessly immersed up to his bulging, tension-filled neck. Or of his ministerial history of greatness in Guyana’s housing sector. Or a compendium of his views as gathered from hard experience about the rocky alleys of leadership. Clean, immaculate leadership. He did well to leave those alone, since most of that eluded him, or he evaded them.

What Mohamed Irfaan Ali the author did was put some pages together, spilled some ink on them, and with the flash of a born showman presented a text on food security. It would not be recommended reading for the schoolchildren of Guyana, or anywhere else. How could this man, this Guyanese, this president, and national political leader possess the gracelessness and recklessness to write a book on food security? If a Guyanese re-migrant armed with his duty-free container, his work product backing, and his different vision for life were to write a book about food security, what could be said of him? What other than that son or daughter of this rich soil mocks his fellows, plays games with them, finds their situation frivolous. He has it good, so he preaches a storm (or writes a book) about the delights embedded in food security. Only a specially ‘patented’ human being gifted with some unknown and matchless pathology would be so classless-indeed, be so obscene-as to pontificate about food security, while his neighbors and his friends and fellow citizens are bent double by the pangs of food needs that go unanswered. By the gnawing fears that are never fully remedied. By the painful knowledge that there is so much to share around but that those who control it prefer to eat it among themselves rather than provide the food security that can be, if managed generously and compassionately.

When cost of living petrifies, food security is the most welcomed visitor, but why is it absent? When the most basic of bread and butter (food) items are always out of reach, then the experience of food security is whole wheat from heaven. This is arguably the most realistic comparison that could be made. When masses of Guyanese are hungry and their president is driven to write a book about food security, then his effort is the equivalent of a hardcore, unreconstructed mafia don waxing scintillatingly about the benefits of robust crime control. It may be of some psychic excitement to Ali the author to take himself seriously and put together a volume on food security: where the gaps are; what must be done; who must be among the contributors; how to go about such, among a host of other vital components. It would have been of enormous benefit to starving and distressed Guyanese if the kind of food relief—quantity and quality and continuity—that they need was in their hands now. Through measures and moves that make a difference now between a hungry man, an anxious mother, and a troubled child. For them food security is not an abstraction, the stuff of glowing literature with a great stream of words. For them food security is that slice of bread and spoon of rice on their plate. Now and then later, today and then tomorrow. The confidence that there is food in the pantry and the pot, well, that is food security at its best.

The wish, the prayer, was that while Ali the author compiled his likely self-congratulating book on food security, he had also done his best to secure the stomachs and the spirit of hungry Guyanese first. He has the means in hand. The PPP Government doesn’t have to be so mean, so revoltingly cruel. The writing of that food security book must be the cruelest of ironies for most Guyanese. There are words, then there is wretchedness. There is wisdom in dealing better with the latter, Mr. President.