Many have had encounters in life when their peers try their best to hurry past an uncomfortable situation. We have (I have) seen others in various walks of life play all kinds of tricks to steer away from a ticklish development. Plus hop from one foot to the other to get away from what they know is a live grenade with the pin pulled. Plus, how they seek to distract, or to duck, what has the potential to expose them, if they open mouth, if they allow the conversation to go on for another minute.
I point to President Ali, for there he is. He casts a sickly light. In his best brushoff, rush-off mode re the ongoing Adriana Younge agony. He cuts a shabby figure. Cry for a day, then hustle away from that before the next day. The president desperately wants to push this behind him, if not kick from the spotlight. Because to him, it may not amount to more than the thunder of noises and disputes over one death; the death of a citizen that is best gotten over quickly, and moved on from even quicker. A death that gives every impression of being the m word.
I have bad news for Pres. Ali. The environment, atmosphere, circumstances are not in that frame of mind. There is no cooperating with what he wishes for, what he gives the impression that all of this business about Adrianna Younge’s horror story should be yesterday news. It is not, honorable one. They tell me that President Ali has a PhD. Then he shouldn’t be so dense, or pretend at being so. I am aware that his shadow can be heavy, but his head shouldn’t be so hard.
A child is dead, and it wasn’t from sickness. Can the terror, the horror, the dishonor of her last few hours on this wretched earth be imagined? This is where my brother, the national leader, Mohamed Irfaan Ali should be. He was the picture of deva and compassion when he raced to Tuschen. The switch he dug up then has apparently malfunctioned since; or has been turned off. The presidential mind is now out of town; hence, out of bounds. The paramountcy of the Adriana Younge case and the integrity that should accompany it, believed to be there, is not there.
For the president to say the equivalent of ‘ah deel wid dah awreddy, suh ah dun wid dah’ disturbs the death of this child, now an international symbol of the rottenness of Guyana, the Guyana Government, the PPP Government, the Ali Government. Mr. Ali comes dangerously close to that state when he tries that old line of his: over and out. Get on with it. Especially in the context of certain Guyanese. When President Ali is in that groove, he doesn’t project oneness. There is untold crassness that he draws to himself, wraps himself in; maybe unknowingly, definitely callously.
For the president’s edification, Adriana’s death and the attendant hazy circumstances is of more than one death, one mystery, one coverup, and one presidential moment of focus. It is of the national cesspool that is Guyana. the national cesspool that flourishes under his leadership. The national cesspool that he now owns. Whether Irfaan Ali wants to or not, he owns the national cesspool of filth, of decay, of all that has wrong in this country in the last five years.
I scrap the leader, and urge the man, to revisit and retravel the words he used in his inaugural five Augusts ago. One word is singled out, all that is needed: accountability. There has been none. The people he changed, arranged, rearranged, in different spots in an array of national institutions have degraded and deranged this country and its peoples.
The Guyana Police Force must be in the front of the line because it is the most incredible, the unintelligible. The national police apparatus, now in shreds, is but a microcosm of the plagues that have devastated this society. And Adriana Younge’s death has now gathered and exposed all those corrupt components in their worst lights and for all the world to see.
No! Mr. President Ali. NO! This is now larger than the life of Adriana Younge so slickly stolen from her, from her village, from her family, from her country. This is larger than the police and its woes. This is about dirty money and what it buys. Access to power. Access to protection. Access to the national-political-commercial compound that empowers those inside its charmed circle to cheat, to corrupt, and even to kill probably. One leader spoke of culture, and there is the death dance of Adriana, against her will, against her hour, against all that is human.
This is what I think our dearest brother Irfaan wants to smartly click his heels and dash away from, so that Adriana’s death becomes a closed chapter in the shortest order. He is entitled to think of himself as that slick and that smart. But I have news for Excellency Ali and his Palace Guard: he isn’t. All of them fused together aren’t. This is the tangled web weaved by the PPP Government, many of such webs. Now they come back with a vengeance to trap those responsible for their existence. I regret to inform President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali that there is no place to run.
He has run out of places to hide. Because of his own weaknesses and failures, which now return in unstoppable strength to haunt his every step, his every word. Due to his impotent leadership, his attractions to the sounds of empty barrels, these are prices that the peoples of this country have to hisse. The strange death of Adriana Younge was the first expression, the stranger developments that followed, are but the first glimpses of how Guyana has self-destructed under Pres. Ali’s stewardship. Try running away from that, skipper. Ah duh aal dat had to bee dun. Such was the last farce wounding grievously.