OPINION: Please say that’s not Pres. Ali on cash grant

Last Updated on Tuesday, 2 December 2025, 22:42 by Writer

by GHK Lall

I still can’t believe what I heard from President Mohamed Irfaan Ali. I can’t believe, still doubt, that it was Pres. Irfaan Ali in person. I can’t think, but that that was an AI-generated version of Guyana’s Pres. Ali. Pres. Ali standing before a gathering and speaking of Guyanese in a manner that I think left so much wanting, so much that was insulting and hurtful.

The president was calm for a change. Good. The president was controlled, unusually so. Very good! The president was cool and circumspect. Excellent. A new kind of Irfaan Ali, the leader, the man. Then the bottom fell out, and Mohamed Irfaan Ali fell into a hole. From what I heard and saw in that Facebook clip, it wasn’t Mr. Ali falling into a hole, but Dr. Ali jumping into one that he built slowly, then hammered home. He tore apart with seeming relish the presidential demeanor. He spoke words that are injurious to Guyanese, and none as much as the poor, the expectant, the hungry, the wretched, and the tired of this oil-rich Republic. Because of that oil, Dr. Ali rides high. Because of that oil Pres. Ali is the toast of the world, with doors flung wide open wherever he considers making an entry, putting in a grandiose appearance. And, because of the haunting ironies, the perennial tragedies, that this double-edged sword called oil embodies and projects, someone like Mohamed Irfaan Ali could stand and utter words that make light of the outstretched hands of Guyanese forced to live in agony in a nation awash with oil.

The words that flowed so sweetly and so savagely from Dr. Ali had to have torn the liver and trachea out of impoverished Guyanese. Not the first one that was production, which he rolled in his mouth, and then followed up with what I think spat into the face of Guyanese. Before production (most likely of oil), Guyanese preference, at a paramount level, is for two other words: CASH GRANT. What they want to hear. What they want to feel and taste. Because it is their lifeline. Because of their pain and circumstances. Because a cash grant is their last hope. Somebody tell me, please, and reassure me and comfort me, please, that that figure speaking so casually, yet so cruelly, about cash grant was not Mohamed Irfaan Ali. Not Ali speaking in any capacity. Not that of the real president. Not that of a genuine national leader. Not of a man or citizen, who Guyanese voted for, who many believe actually cares.

Cash grant! Cash grant! Cash grant! Damnit! It is about what impoverished Guyanese, cost-of-living tortured inhabitants, bill-menaced citizens, sick and tired and distressed human beings, look forward to as their salvation. No matter how small and the little time it lasts. The momentary relief is what is yearned for, prayed for, knelt and asked for, and expected from, God first, and their top elected leader next. Under what guise, through what haze, does a president make fun of his own people? Citizens who are punishing, who live with pangs that shred stomach, psyche, and the little dignity that they have left? For the second time, will some Guyanese take a moment to tell me that that was not Pres. Irfaan Ali. Can’t be. No! No! No! There is low, and though I think poorly of the president, I didn’t think he would stoop so low.

But he wasn’t alone in his lush moment of dangling poor Guyanese as high as a tree, and then laughing (he was, wasn’t he?) when cash grant crossed his lips and his audience erupted in long, loud laughter. Each trill, each echo, was a dagger. I can survive. But what of Guyanese who are waiting and depending on a cash grant to make ends meet, to have some kind of Xmas? I take my hat off to Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, and even offer a little curtsy. He barely cracked a smile, and even then, it looked forced. He was uncomfortable, didn’t like one bit what he heard about cash grant, how it was delivered, and what the near riotous laughter conveyed.

Laughter conveying that it’s fine to fool around and make fun of Guyanese who are cash grant-dependent, cash grant-expectant. My God! Has this country sunk low! I am a man of humor with contributions proving. But no ‘laffing’ in any manner at the dead, the depressed, the down and out-on-their-luck. Nor at those who fall into the death trap of cash grant dependents. Not in any circumstances. Not for any reason. Because, but for the grace of God, go I. It will be an uphill struggle to look at Mohamed Irfaan Ali with some little regard going forward. I wish it weren’t so.