GALILEO, an astrophysical genius, wrote that “The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it has nothing else in the universe to do.” This is essentially a commentary on an entity having the responsibility to operationalise many macro tasks in a high-tensioned, diverse and competing universe, yet be able to perform supposedly minute tasks as if that is all to be done.
That is the hat President, Dr Irfaan Ali, wears. He has vast tasks such as managing the economic and monetary policies of the nation, which are praised by the international financial institutions for sound outcomes and projections.
He manages our agricultural policy to the point where Guyana is declared as the only food self-sufficient country on the planet.
He manages an emerging petrostate and the fastest-growing economy on the planet, while averting economic calamities that have visited many others in a similar state. He has to manage Guyana’s growing regional and international stature while confronting the worst border crisis we have had since the 1899 Arbitral Award.
Dr Ali is also managing the largest housing programme in the history of Guyana and the CARICOM.
He is responsible for the most massive, ambitious, and significant infrastructural development ever seen in Guyana, together with the grandest investments and expansion in healthcare.
He also oversees our biggest investments in social services and social- benefits transfers, education, culture, sports, entrepreneurship, tourism and hinterland development.
Despite these mega undertakings, President Ali finds the time to meet with individuals, groups, and communities, as a matter of course, to attend to their personal concerns.
During this first installment of his tenure, he found time to play cricket, do “bush cooks,” sing karaoke, chip to a few tunes and visit the homes of common people as if that is all that mattered. People all over Guyana are endeared to him and the PPP is growing at rates faster than any time since the 1960s. The PPP is attracting more demographic diversity than any time in recent memory.
We are currently in elections season and President Ali’s track record and performance will be the focal point of every party’s campaign. The opposition will be heels over head trying to diminish every act of the President. They accuse him of being too sociable, but the population have already demonstrated that they prefer that free-spirited interaction in favour of the stiff aloofness of his immediate predecessor.
No other presidential candidate in these elections can boast of half of the capacity demonstrated by Dr Ali.
Let’s take Aubrey Norton for example. He has never managed any major government institution. The only responsibility he’s had since becoming opposition leader was to grow and diversify his party’s, membership and he has failed miserably. If he can’t manage and consolidate his little sphere of influence, it would be a major stretch of the imagination to think that he can keep the national administrative cosmos in orbit, while ensuring the little things that matter to the people also get due attention.
Nigel Hughes is also afflicted with the Norton contagion; he is markedly unsuccessful with even the most basic orbital party-management task.
Not enough focus to ripen the individual political grapes.
This brings me to Mr Azruddin Mohamed. Can someone be more self-conceited in the vanity of his ostensible cultic personality? There is no greater display of self-conceit than to witness a man operating a political organisation in his own name. It also cannot escape the eyes of even the cursory analyst that Azruddin, despite his huge wealth accumulation, is nothing but a failed businessman who needed to turn to major transnational organised criminal enterprise, according to official US government data.
Judging from his public utterances, it is not difficult to surmise that Azruddin is clueless about how the country is administered.
Let’s take for example, during the initial hiccups with the universal cash grant. The young Mohamed made a well-produced and directed video claiming that GECOM is able to run an election with almost 500,000 voters and successfully count the votes in one day, and asked why must the cash-grant distribution take longer. It totally escapes this political tyke that GECOM gets a budgetary allocation of billions of dollars, permanent administrative managers, its own governing legislation, and a network of staff of over 5,000 permanent and temporary staff working together for years. Not to mention the staff and volunteers of political parties that support the process, which also demand significant law-enforcement deployment and international input to make the voting and the counting a successful venture in one day. Such infantile commentary that consumed a lot of thoughtful coordination and video- production effort is indicative of a mind that is loaded with extreme arrogance and astonishing ignorance. Why should we surrender our precious vote to such an entity?
In 2025, Guyanese have only one viable candidate — Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali for President!
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.