OPINION: Presidential walkout: history revisited, the present defiled

Last Updated on Saturday, 24 January 2026, 22:32 by Writer

By GHK Lall

It is said that the more things change, the more they stay the same. To that I attach this: the more some have every reason to rise higher, the more they stick at the low depths that’s loved. The British High Commissioner to Guyana, Excellency Jane Miller, is set to go away. Pres. Ali decided that it was just as a good time for he and his attendant ministers to go away, too. A rough, abrupt farewell it was, a spot abrasive also. Some things are just not done. I thought that after five and a half years, Pres. Ali would have learned, grown, risen. He loses luster, makes himself look small. And, worse, delivers another assault on the presidency, which mantle is now shaded by scars and warts, since it began to sit on his head.

In years past, the PPP made a cottage industry of walkouts. Parliament was the victim of tramping feet, a controlled rush for the exits, a breath of fresh Guyana air. Burnham and his gang could drink of the fetid air in what then stood as a desecrated chamber of Guyana. Let them have it, that first cabal of Guyanese luminaries who added further darkness to the den that parliament had become. Cheddi Jagan gave it to them. On an involuntary basis, to be sure, but in a dignified and justifiable manner, so I think. And so it went: walkout, walkout, walkout. The PPP on the move; frustrated, angry, bitter. But always with head held high. Cheddi Jagan and his crew would have continued their walkouts, even when their cheap shoes no longer had soles left. Or laces. Things were that bad. Yet they never stooped low. They had the might of right on their side.

Pres. Ali and team have might on their side. But what of right? All they know is spite, the low road, the reflexive rictus of reactionaries bared in snarling grimace. The PPP and the president have the upper hand, yet they operate as though they have no hand. So, they walk out when the man from WIN (their former bosom companion, their prized possession) walked in the door. Much was made of the moment when Mr. Aubrey Norton refused to shake a hand. What will be made of the sitting president of this much-studied, much-clapped, Republic, now unable to manifest the imperturbable equanimity that’s so inseparable from the dignity of his office?

The president may not know better. But do all his helpers, including those who were around Burnham, now be so derelict about what occasions as the fond farewell of the British High Commissioner demand? Presidents don’t walk out. Presidents walk in and their presence is enough to command the moment and, if it comes to that, walk over obstacles, however inopportune they may be, however blindsided and cornered the national leader finds himself to be. Others walk out. Presidents don’t; they command the field. Excellency Miller will have a startling final memory that sticks. How she must long for Mayfair or St John’s Wood, to wipe the dust of this incorrigible land from off her feet.

By way of precedent, another plenipotentiary had to endure the distaste of two PPP ministers disgracing themselves in his residence, no less. No, they didn’t overdrink! Some rabid spirit invaded them, leading them to decide that they were overdressed. So, they went right ahead and shed. What was too confining and cumbersome. Imagine that my fellow Guyanese: a political striptease in the castle of the incredulous American ambassador. He must have delighted to relay to his convulsed listeners back in the highlands of Washington, about how the natives from the lowlands of Guyana cavort and conduct themselves.

People for reasons of their own may walk out on a president to convey the intensity of their disagreements and disgusts with him. A president is held to a higher, the highest, standards. No president should walk out of a diplomatic gathering; especially when so much is owed to that plenipotentiary and her country. Regardless of which former friend, now converted to fiend, walks over the threshold. It wasn’t only petty. It was puerile. Behind the bluster of many men overblown with arrogance, there’s a bag of wind.

I recall how during his first inaugural Pres. Ali invoked Rudyard Kipling. I paraphrase: ‘…talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you…vou’ll be a Man…’ So easy to quote, so hard to wear that coat of arms. The last time I took the president to task, a cabinet knob was hurled at me. Maybe the whole cabinet now.