OPINION: Jagdeo on the ball, forced to make the call by GHK Lall

Last Updated on Tuesday, 8 September 2026, 6:56 by Written By Denis Chabrol

By GHK Lall

Great to see Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, Vice President, taking control. Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, Regional Executive Officers, and assorted others summoned to a session with the new Minister for Virtue and against Vice. Dr. Jagdeo is the best man for that job. He knows the territory, having long travelled it repeatedly in some fashion. But when VP Jagdeo is compelled to leave his other priority duties to lecture ministers, PSs, REOs, and that odd lot, it inspires several strains of thought. Try these published ones.

For starters, it reinforces that matters have really gone off the deep end in PPP management land. Management land has metastasized into advanced corruption land, stage IV. I use the vocabulary of cancer, with which I have much familiarity, to relay how unbelievably and undeniably bad corruption is in the PPP Govt. For a former president, and Guyana’s Oil President, to separate from the nation’s riches, even for a moment, is all that Guyanese need to know about how far and self-destructive chronic corruption has become in the PPP Govt. Corruption inside the PPP. Corruption around the PPP. Corruption over and under and all over the PPP -government and party, most players and practitioners of the art of stewardship in times of gushing oil.

Then, for Excellency Jagdeo to go to the lengths he did with his high-powered and highflying (and high-skilled and high energy [think of those two]) audience conveys that there’s a huge, telling, and glaring deficit in the PPP Govt relative to corruption containment. The other excellencies are not up to the job. So, it falls on him to sound off (carefully), read the riot act (tactfully), and fill the void (cleverly). Give a caution, but don’t give away too much. Why expose the PPP unnecessarily? Why serve up sacrificial lambs for the news hounds and others waiting to feast? Those who should lead the way on corruption, and give the older, busier, Dr. Jagdeo a breather must be sluggish, self-centered, and have the strangest ideas about honesty, integrity, ethics, and the ethos of democratic and clean politics.

Dr. Jagdeo’s own words offer the best testimony of what he sees is in dire need of correction. He was on the move and in the face of ministers, PSs and REOs about their “ensuring compliance with applicable laws and regulations while ensuring sound and efficient management of the public resources allocated and entrusted to their respective ministries, regions, and agencies.” Ye gods! When Jagdeo has to take off the gloves and throwdown a hissing cobra into the midst of his audience, it is time for a Guyanese expression on corruption. Boat dun gaan ah falz. Boat and passengers gone overboard. They are expendable. Jagdeo’s PPP is not.

I scratch my head. When was the last time that Dr. Jagdeo, in any of his PPP leadership capacities, saw it fit to insist on “ensuring compliance with applicable law and regulations?” It means that it is not happening at all. Things gone downhill and taking the PPP into a dunghill. Messy business, that is. Or it is not happening anywhere close to the required minimum, if only to give the PPP Govt and Excellency Bharrat some wriggle room, a needed boost where in counts. In the court of critical and now contemptuous public opinion.

Next, what Guyana’s 2nd Vice President did at the Arthur Chung Convention Center is not really his call. In effect, to call a public PPP dressing down. The 1st Vice President, General Mark Phillips, has the first claim on such a move and engagement, and only after the president has given his nod of approval. What all of this emphasizes to me is that Bharrat Jagdeo grew tired of all the dropped balls, all the flagrant fouls, and all the unpardonable slippages, so he took the bit in his teeth, and commanded his audience to turn up. Or else…. Now that’s the Jagdeo I like, propaganda value, maneuver, and whatever aside.

Wrapping up with a red ribbon. Vice President Jagdeo had no choice but to deal in transparency and accountability. Since, there is no other. Ow bhaiya! That’s showing who is still the real boss. Blessed day.