Dear Editor,
A friend sent me a short clip of President Ali being interviewed for the BBC’s Hard Talk programme. I was pleasantly astonished. Then joylessness followed. For I saw the president rising to a high plateau, and almost immediately came the troubling reminders of how lifeless and lost he can be, has been. I watched and listened to the President, a rarity, and saw a leader flashing with fire, coming alive with energy, bristling with potency. The first question asked of myself was simple: why not? The second was, if then and there and about that, then how come….? And the last was, the contradiction, why the ugliness of the contradiction?
Excellency Ali was asked of carbon emissions from Guyana, given this country’s rapid escalation of oil production and all that that holds for what is released into the atmosphere and environment. Two billion tons is a staggering, devastating number. Before the question could be completed, Guyana’s president leaned forward, index finger pointed, and almost rose out of his chair. He was that energized,
galvanized, electrified. Pardon the redundancy (thrice), but I think it vital to relay the passion and conviction that came out of the eyes, body language, and pores of Dr. Ali. I will skip over the verbiage about vast forests preserved, carbon sink and carbon credits offset, as they were all encapsulated in the president’s vibrant response.
Where some have opined that he was arrogant, I saw President Ali as assertive, aggressively so. Where some may see him as unmannerly, I observed Guyana’s head of state operating with a full head of steam, on fire for Guyana. Where others are sure to conclude a man lacking in style, I beheld a national leader speaking with power and authority, even perspicacity. Like I said, there was amazement at this startling incarnation of Excellency Ali: a moment to savour. A lush sound for ears that have longed to hear similar vitality, identical compelling potency when dealing with other matters in the national portfolio. The national portfolio is the presidential portfolio. To my immense regret, it is now my compulsory duty to point to the blinding contradiction, crippling weakness that now characterize the attitudes, approaches, and actions of the same President Ali in managing the Exxon-Guyana relationship.
It is a relationship that beggars the imagination, insults the intellect, so obscene it is. One prostituting itself in the finest finery as a partnership. A corporate-political one, a multinational-national one, as hailed. Like hell it is. When the same presidential vigour displayed over carbon emissions for BBC viewers (and the world) is called for, with Exxon, Excellency Ali is reduced to whimpering. Why, sir? When the same powerful presence of mind, and unsparing, scorching words and phrases are demanded with the Exxon contract standing as the matter at hand, President Ali is the thinnest and palest of shadows. He is a nonstarter: invisible and inaudible, MIA and AWOL; the former is true to his name. When I cast about for the same formidable essence in President Mohamed Irfaan Ali, as manifested before the microphone and the videophone of the immaculate British Broadcasting Corporation, regarding the Exxon 2016 contract, the best that is encountered is an absence of strength, a paucity of courage, a lack of heart and guts.
Where is that Irfaan Ali that was so strong and unrelenting and in the face during the BBC Hard Talk interview? Why is he content to be so piteously paralytic when the 2016 Exxon contract is the subject? What 2020 contract has Ali’s PPP negotiated for itself with Woods’ Exxon? What price power?
When it is that most repugnant of corporate instruments, the 2016 contract that is the issue, President Ali is not fighting off the BBC inquisitor, he paddles off to sea. President Ali is less than a shadow, he is nonexistent.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall