Dear Editor,

Bharrat Jagdeo is campaigning for a fourth term and power without accountability.

Yes, that is correct: The loud lead actor out there campaigns for a fourth term. All denials aside, political, and many other existences, depend on his party winning, so as to assure Bharrat Jagdeo a fourth term in office.

He never really demitted office, as there was never any genuine distancing from the centre of power, and the power apparatus. It is common knowledge that he was always in charge of the PPP from behind the scenes, given the limitations of the incumbent, and the docility and pedestrian character of the surrounding cast.

Now, he is out of the closet in the public square and in the public glare, as campaigner-in-chief, rabble-rouser in-chief, cheerleader-in-chief, and chief strategist and propagandist. He shows the party sheep why he is indispensable, and the rest of the nation why he is considered so unlikeable. To the PPP’s chagrin, this is the man that many have come to love to hate.

There he is rallying the desperate, shoring up the pessimistic, bullying the meek, and abusing the resistant, all in characteristic fashion. This is real heavy lifting from a man who has repeatedly declared publicly neither interest nor intention in seeking a de jure third term. He does not have to declare anything, while he works assiduously to gain a de facto fourth term in office from behind the scenes. Only the opposition stands in the way.

As has been noticed by local observers, all the ills and excesses of Mr Jagdeo’s corrosive reign continued after November, 2011. It was as if there was no change of leadership. All of his questionable policies (media matters, local government) continued; all of his suspect people remained entrenched in strategic places; and all of his divisive practices (secrecy, confrontation) stand as perverse exhibits in the social, economic, and political landscapes.   Clearly, he calls the shots.

This is the man who has presence and power to determine whose names appear on April 7, and those who will not. This is the man who gets the best of all worlds: On the one hand, he continues to be the unchallenged, feared power behind the PPP throne, and on another, his power comes without any accountability, as he has no official existence.

Because of this deniability, Mr Jagdeo has no qualms about showing his true colours through prancing unashamedly, even tauntingly, in full ethnic paraphernalia, be it at Babu John or Kitty, or anywhere else. He cannot help himself. The latest foray into the combustible race realm came through that comment about the denial of US visas to Guyanese should the opposition sweep to power. It might appear to be artful and subtle, but both listeners and his intended wider audience knows that Indians make up the bulk of visa applicants, and it is they who will bear the brunt of those rejections. It does not take a spiritualist to detect that this is another crude, reckless, mischievous message designed to draw the vacillating into the fold. The gloves are off now. There is no more empty talk of unity and one nation from the PPP side, only a fierce unrelenting insistence on baiting the opposition and on holding tight its own wavering people.

Remember this is about the high stakes of continuing. It is not a time for the squeamish, or the hesitant. And Mr Jagdeo is just the man for the job.

 Yours faithfully,

GHK Lall