OPINION: Jagdeo says trust him; I say give me something to vest trust in

Last Updated on Monday, 24 March 2025, 21:51 by Writer

By GHK Lall

PPP General Secretary and Vice President, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo gets better by the day. It is my joy to say that today. What kind of extraordinarily dedicated son of Guyana is he, that he leaves the honeypots of GT and traveled all the way to the barren outlands of Babu Jaan to honor C. Bharrat Jagan? One doctor joining with his party to remember another doctor, a real one. GS Jagdeo went to the heart of the gathering. Elections. There is appreciation for a leader who seizes the moment. I recall a man who was trying to interest me in life insurance in a New York Funeral Home. It was my mother’s last farewell. Then Dr. Jagdeo trotted out a strange and dangerous trump card. He spoke of trust. In the context of elections here, I combine three questions in one. Trust. Who to trust? Why trust one party more than the other? Why trust at all? It is my story, and it is where my brother Jagdeo and I part company. May it not be a parting like that of Cain and Abel.

Bharrat Jagdeo uses the word trust. I give it to him straight up, flush in the face. Give me something to grasp, some little something to vest my trust in, with his PPP as government, as ruling party. I lower the bar. Just as a clean and pristine political party. I lower the standards, with Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo specifically in mind. From his record as a former minister, a former head-of-state, the current 2nd Vice President, and present national leader without compare, my plea, my position cannot be simpler. Give me something to trust in thee, my brother.

I regret immensely to report that when I seek the thinnest morsel of trust from him, to detect it in him, there is nothing. Nothing to invest precious trust in him. Empty-handed I am. Some said he is out to lunch. Others say that he is over his head relative to trust. Still others note that whenever the issue of trust comes up, Dr. Jagdeo usually loses his focus, his footing (and his memory). The brackets are used for emphasis, to highlight his grave shortcomings in the department of trust.

Dr. Jay waxed dazzlingly and at length about the failures, hence untrustworthiness, of the PNC. Man, that was such a low standard that it never got off the ground. Because, let this be said clearly and sharply, the opposition has not manifested why it should be trusted anymore than Jagdeo’s tricky PPP. Don’t tell the African man and the Indian man and Indigenous man about trust afterwards. Tell them by showing them that the PNC (or AFC) can go up in the face of Exxon’s viceroys and commanders on the ground here (and in Texas), and say this is what Guyanese must have, or else…. It must be said now; not what is promised to be done a year from now, and then within the first 100 days. That’s 100 years into the unknown and the untrusted.

Mr. (sorry, Dr.) Jagdeo had himself promised, committed, swore, about what he was going to do with that goddamned oil contract, that infernal beast let out from the gates of hell and set free to devour the dreams of my people, my fellow Guyanese. My people, ah, Dr. Jagdeo, I am beginning to sound like a runner, a competitor. GS Jagdeo took an oath before all Guyanese and said ‘trust me, I will fix the Exxon contract, I will be about honest governance, I will be about clean leadership.’ Well, my fellow Guyanese (and my fellow Americans and Europeans (pardon the liberty taken with the latter), what did Jagdeo deliver on each of those three counts? What is tricky, or what is trustworthy? Indeed, trust has gone underground, shoved there as though it is some incestuous secret to be kept away from Guyanese.

When Dr. Jagdeo delivers on his commitments, he would be the first man I would trust. Because he has fouled his own chances of embodying trust at some minimal level, any level, then he amounts to the last man in Guyana that I would trust. In the world even, since Donny Trump, Benny Netanyahu, and Nari Modi are ahead of him. The only one that Bharrat Jagdeo emerges in front of where trust is concerned is Nicholás Maduro. Jagdeo has had his opportunities to prove how much he can and must be trusted, and look how he fell apart from what he did. Permit me to share a few: the IDPADA-G farce and calumny; the Wales gas-to-energy secrecy; the reality and diminishment of the presidency; his Thursday after assaults and batteries (in another, those would qualify as felonies). Whither trust then, VP Jagdeo? How can anyone, reasonable man or woman, even a studious child, be so reckless as to trust?

I want to trust former head-of-state Jagdeo. The others across the political spectrum also. Give me something, the tangible, the valuable that not one can challenge, deny. This is not about who to trust more. It is about who to trust at all. I could be a believer in, and supporter of, Bharrat Jagdeo, the leader. The man must first manifest what is trustworthy. Not even totally, for I will take marginally. I leave the rest up to him. How I see it, call it.