Ministers made of steel
Jan 25, 2025
Kaieteur News-We congratulate ministers in the PPPC Government for the strength of their stomachs. Considering the scorn and dismissive manner in which their master, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, treats them, they are special people, made of asbestos. When Jagdeo has some tricky national matter that is too hot for him to handle, he finds a minister to dump that in his or her lap. A constant stream of embarrassments has been the lot of most ministers from an increasingly out of control and tyrannical Jagdeo, yet they pretend to be untroubled, as if that is the way it should be. There is a saying in Guyana: when a victim of domestic violence is accustomed to a constant daily battering, a thick constitution, kind of immunity, is developed. The blows are expected, and when they don’t come, the victim wonders when the hammer is going to drop.
General Secretary of the PPP and Vice President of the Oil and Gas portfolio has helped Jagdeo deteriorate from borderline paranoia and anger management problems. He is now a leader given to fits of hysteria and an uncontrollable urge to abuse even those who are supposed to be his friends. Political comrades they may be, some of many years, others of more recent presence, but none is spared being made into readily volunteered pawns at the convenience of Jagdeo and his caprices. One of the latter is when he dodges from coming clean with Guyanese on issues of national significance. What Jagdeo does is push a minister into the fire and watch them get roasted by public scrutiny or the attentions of the independent media.
When ministers are shoved into matters like the Wales gas-to-energy project, and they are clueless about what is going on, then they are made to look foolish before Guyanese. Could it be that this former head of state, now vice president, gets some kind of secret satisfaction from setting up his own people for a fall? Prime Minister Mark Phillips, a retired brigadier general and former Guyana Defense Force chief of staff, was given the dubious distinction by Jagdeo of being left tongue-tied three times on the issue of presenting the documents related to the Wales gas-to-energy project. Prime Minister Phillips is the 1st Vice President in the PPPC Government’s rankings, but there was the 2nd Vice President Jagdeo making him look like a clumsy schoolboy before all Guyana. Minister Gail Teixeira, a long-serving government loyalist through good times and bad also came in for her share of Jagdeo’s less than straightforward standards. She was made to look incompetent and, worse still, as though she is part of some huge conspiracy involving a continuing coverup of what the gas-to-energy is all about, with the documents that prove its viability.
If Jagdeo does not think twice of subjecting a comrade of the standing of Gail Teixeira to ugly suspicion and undeserving disdain, then what is he capable of heaping on the other ministers? What does he come up with to make them disgrace themselves before one national audience after the other? The case of the Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat, represents a study in the impotence of ministers. There is a trail of evidence that confirms how they are muzzled and limited by Jagdeo from delivering on their portfolios. Vickram Bharrat is the ‘subject’ minister in the vital oil and gas sector, with at least some related responsibilities. Yet, for all intents and purposes, and from the record, Minister Bharrat is nothing but a puppet, one reduced to a shadow of himself. He is given thankless jobs, which Jagdeo either wants to keep a secret, or he has some inserted some tricky features in them that do not hold up under deep probing. Minister Bharrat is left in the unhealthy situation of having to keep his mouth shut to please Jagdeo, or open it and risk attracting the lash from him for revealing too much.
Like many other ministers in the PPPC Government, Minister Bharrat can only speak when he is allowed to, and from a script approved by Jagdeo. Ministers have put down their heads and shrugged off Jagdeo’s humiliations. They must be made of steel or soft mud.
(Ministers made of steel)
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