Dear Editor,
Nigel Hughes has cleared the first hurdle. He has got some others coming his way. His maneuvering skills, backroom strengths, broad-based appeal, and starting to deliver on some of what he has made his heartfelt positions. Grueling challenges. His triumph in the AFC’s leadership contest is the stepping stone for the big marble: the consensus presidential candidate. He has one good thing going for him; on the other hand, behind-the-scenes reality is unyielding. Given my own positions about Mr. Hughes’s potential national candidacy for president of Guyana, may his trials not be insurmountable.
Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton is open to a consensus presidential candidate. A practical position. Bluntly put, the PNC doesn’t have the numbers. More bluntly, Mr. Norton does not have the requisite pulling power to take him and his group over the finish line. Mr. Norton may know this, which explains, in part, his bow to realpolitik and electoral arithmetic, his openness to consider a consensus candidate for president leading that fight. From my calculations, there is none richer in promise than Nigel Hughes. Despite his drawbacks, this is where I stand with his now long delayed reappearance in the national political wars. But there is the PNC boiler room with ideas about who the presidential candidate must be.
I believe that the PNC hardcore will block a consensus candidate, unless from deep in the bosom of the PNC itself. Even with better prospects for electoral victory with a non-PNC presidential candidate, the purists in the party would still resist. This is beyond Mr. Hughes’s arc of influence: bystander.
But there is another just as demanding issue, and it is all in Nigel Hughes’s hands. It can make him or break him. He can make an example of himself that is hard to beat. Self-sacrifice. He does, and more Guyanese would look on him differently. He doesn’t, and it will be all for naught.
For then he would consign himself to the same man-eating swamp in which the incumbents in today’s government leadership cadre now belong. Even the idiotic and ignorant in Guyana discern this.
The issue that Nigel Hughes must face, grapple with, is what he does with his relationship with Exxon. It doesn’t get closer for a Guyanese than having an office in Houston, Texas, Exxon’s sprawling hunting grounds. Mr. Hughes cannot have his feet in two boats simultaneously. He cannot raise his hand as a presidential candidate – a consensus one – for the Guyanese electorate, while his head and his voice are for Exxon. The two are incompatible, locally unmanageable and, from this negligible corner, unacceptable. Mr. Hughes’s heart may be in the right place, I will give him that pass. Being inside of Exxon is advantageous; but the national plight and fight demand a monopoly on his energy, skills, courage. The choice is his. For me, divided loyalty, or twin-headed loyalty simply won’t work. Presidential interest and Exxon’s counsel are irreconcilable.
Again, that most difficult word in Guyana’s political dictionary, culture: self-sacrifice. Nothing could be nobler than such a decision. What would differentiate him more from his adversaries than such a move? What have adversaries sacrificed if not integrity, truth, patriotism, personal honour? For what? Exxon and mammon? Plus, their lust for power by any sordid bargain. The more sordid the better.
The hopes and aspirations of Guyanese have been sacrificed on the altar of Exxon’s bountiful bag of goodies.
This is where Nigel Hughes drives his stake into the ground. He shows the Guyanese people that his good words (constitutional reform, fairness, including and belonging and participating, and more) are backed fully, squarely by his deeds. Who can stand against, then? He rises to consensus presidential status, and he severs his relationship with Exxon, and in Mr. Nigel Hughes, Guyanese have the real article.
One last thing, the return of one Raphael Trotman is not coincidental. Consider the depths to which the PPP Government has driven this country. Consider American angst with what devastates Guyana, their own long-term objectives. Guyana is in for interesting times.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
