A President who has lost his purpose: David Granger at the crossroads

This article, by Prof. Daniel K. Gibran, was first published on June 15

In his quiet moments he sits and ponders his fate. He senses that power is slipping away from him. But the words that form his thoughts are eluding him. He listens to his advisers bellowing their cacophonous sounds, swelling to a crescendo, and quickly dissipating into thin air.

He has become a man with a seared conscience struggling to find his way out of a morass of his own making. And in spite of strenuous mental efforts to regain a modicum of balance, he continues to grope in mental darkness.

But the dawn of a new week has brought with it a ray of sunshine into his empty soul. But it is not the sunshine he anticipated and envisioned.

David Granger was looking forward to this coming week; salvation at last was in sight. Good news was just around the corner. The recount would vindicate him. It came but not in the way he expected. The results were devastating, leaving him with a painful emptiness and a deep mental and emotional anguish.

Two blistering reports, one from CARICOM and the other from the OAS, have blindsided him. These reports, unassailable in their conclusions and puissant in their analytical rigor, have finally driven a nail in his coffin, extinguishing any flickering hope he was still entertaining.

His dream of electoral victory and a return to political power evaporated in public view. And David Granger, caught between a rock and a hard place, finally realized that he is fighting a losing battle.

In his tortured soul he still believes that he can salvage his tarnished reputation and live to fight another day. But this new week is only three working days long, not five. So, time is running out. The 17th is Declaration Day, and Granger is trembling. But he makes another desperate move.

This time he plays a new tune with words that are jejune at best, words bereft of any substance. And the Opposition Leader was not dancing. Rightly, Mr. Bharat Jagdeo repudiated Granger’s mumbo jumbo, did not recognize either the words or the beat of that music. David was playing the Rhythm of the Ancient Mariner while Bharat was attuned to Sohani Raat.

Having lost the election recount, David Granger continues with his fulminations and empty rhetoric. He yearns to portray himself to the Guyanese people as a messianic leader who can be trusted to lead Guyana to the promised land of economic development and prosperity. His entourage calls him: His Excellency. But his deeply troubling recalcitrance to concede in the face of overwhelming evidence, one that is inexplicable at best and risible at worse, is further evidence of his unfitness to lead Guyana.

In his messianic cloak we behold a megalomaniacal political leader whose only objective is a naked grab for political power and a display of perverse and profound contempt for the rule of law and for democracy. He knows that voting is foundational to democracy, and that the will of the electorate cannot be trampled. But he is willing to trample on the sacred rights of the people who rejected him in a fair and free election.

As the sun sets on a man who once showed so much promise, raising the hopes and aspirations of thousands of Guyanese at home and abroad, we see this man struggling to let go of power in the sunset of his tenure. And so, president David Granger, I say to you that in this iconic moment of your presidency when your legacy is weighed in the balances, “be a man and take your licks.”

Failure to do the right thing, and you know what that is, would ineluctably cast you in the appellation of another megalomaniac who drank the Kool-Aid many moons ago in our homeland. You have lost your purpose; it is time to go. You have a handsome pension of US$15,000 per month to collect. Take it before the Treasury runs out.