OPINION: Chief policymaker public servant pappy-show at Arthur Chung

Last Updated on Thursday, 3 October 2024, 17:03 by Writer

by GHK Lall

If one is of a certain frame of mind, lives a certain way, then there is everything to love, even admire, about Guyana’s chief policymaker, Dr. Bharat Jagdeo’s operating style. But only if one were disposed along some curly lines. Take this inspiring development involving a small army of senior public servants summoned to the Arthur Chung Convention Center for a heart-to-heart. Because Mr. Jagdeo is the mover and tap dancer behind that arm’s length powwow between the policymaker and public servants, Guyanese get a good feel about how their oil dollars, borrowed dollars, and budgeted dollars should be managed. Spectacle and calculated for maximum media effect moment aside, this is Jagdeo at his charming best, which would make a cobra envious. Give the public what it wants, tick a box (pappy show delivered), then carry on with the usual business. Guyanese know what kind.

The first side of Bharat Jagdeo’s public modus operandi is to read riot acts. The second is to engage in his now patented, timeworn farces. The third is to speak with a straight face and pretend at seriousness. As an actor, Jagdeo is getting to be a better performer. As a policymaker, he is an extra, nothing but a rum-soaked squib; even the rum fails to produce a spark, one that leads to ignition. His policymaker pappy-show with public servants is just that: a show. What the VP did at Arthur Chung was go through the motions, pretend at getting ready to crack offending heads, and ensure that the media gobbled all of it up. Instead of these shams that maintain the corruption culture and give gas to the PPP Government corruption caravan, there is a better recommendation. The offenders are known, so make examples of them. The police know Guyana’s major criminals. Jagdeo should know the more corrupt public servants. Men of merit to the valuable oil sector got a swift kick in the rear, and off they went. Women who ran afoul of PPP powers were either run over or run out of town. Again, and in the clearest voice: the PPP Government does not have this place under control for the fun of it. The Arthur Chung public servant expo was part of the trickery wrapped around naïve Guyanese.

The belief at this elevation is that if President Ali and Vice President Jagdeo are genuinely committed to eradicating, even minimizing rampant corruption, they both know what they must do. Call a PPP congress in extraordinary session and lay their cards on the table. We are going to kick ass on any occasion that a dollar is looked at suspiciously. Heads will roll (recall that old comedy: no sacred cows). Go ahead! Go and vote for the PNC! In fact, if the old-line communist (and now closet Kremlinologist) in Jagdeo had some convincing substance in him, he would have done a Nikita Khruschev a long time ago and be done with all this pussyfooting and his mugging for the microphones and cameras. The PPP insider-class contractors, top public servants, state agency commissars, and others of the same corrupt mentality would all have been crushed and sent to break bricks in the Mazaruni area.

Guyana’s chief policymaker and chief prevaricator knows this too well. So, he persists with his public circuses where a big batch of senior public servants is shipped to Arthur Chung to hear the same old song that everybody knows is part of a running joke but make-believe that it’s a new symphony from Bharat Beethoven, or another classic from Indian master composer R.D. (Bharat) Burman. Examining this Jagdeo circus with senior public servants as his knowing, smirking audience at Arthur Chung, those who can still think for themselves in Guyana should remember what happens in regular business.