Dear Editor,
WE have a new foreign expert these days. His name is Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba, a Kenyan. The man has been imported into Guyana’s politics and touted as an anti-corruption guru. But what is he really doing here?
The answer is obvious for anyone who has followed the modus operandi of the KN publisher and other personalities who claim to represent civic groups. Their strategy is to bring in someone who appears qualified, and who is politically neutral, but who is, in fact and indeed, politically clueless about this country.
The truth is Lumumba knows nothing about Guyana. His expert pronouncements are based on his experience in Africa, but there he has been under a cloud of ambiguity. Was he not fired from a top job in Kenya itself? In the future, Lumumba should focus his attention on what he knows about pain of going away ignominiously like Dr. Williams.
Do you all remember Dr. Vivian Williams? KN had him as a world-leading expert on everything, including oil and gas, and corruption. Dr. Vivian Williams, as it turned out, used his general knowledge about contracts to make all sorts of wild and irrelevant pronouncements, all the while hiding under the label “New York Attorney.”
Once the Guyanese found out that he is no expert on Guyana, he bolted. Mind you, before his disappearance, he was in KN every day, with nice photos in suit and tie. All of that came to zero.
We were also treated to the so-called expertise of Tom Sanzillo, with the heavy title, “Director of Financial Analysis at the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis” (IEEFA), and Gerard Kreeft, another so-called energy-transition adviser. Both have been thoroughly roughed-up by the brilliant young Guyanese financial analyst – Joel Bhagwandin.
We have another variety of the ‘foreign’ who are presented as experts or present themselves as such. Think, for instance, of OGGN. They all live overseas. The OGGN diaspora group have lived more than a combined 150 years away from Guyana, and so for all practical purposes, they are also “foreign.” They make it to KN regularly.
Readers already know that the Kaieteur News publisher has promoted people like Lumumba, Williams, Sanzillo and others. It is now clear that these people have been drafted into a political project. The poor souls are quite likely oblivious to ways in which their names and images are being exploited to advance the political career of their Guyanese host.
Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba will soon discover that he is being made a dullard by sticking his nose in a place about which he has no knowledge and zero experience. He, like the discredited Dr. Vivian Williams, will walk away sad and forlorn, with a sense of being used for purposes beyond his grasp.
For these men and the sponsor: “That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself and falls on the other.” Macbeth, of course.
Sincerely,
Dr. Randolph Persaud
