October 22,2017
I had planned this column to examine two press releases by the PPP, one specifically on my life in Guyana, in which alternative facts were used to describe what I achieved in my country. And the other with a reference to former police officer, Paul Slowe, and how he got his job. That analysis will have to wait, because of the President’s appointment of a GECOM chairman without adherence to the Carter formula.
I do not agree with the unilateral appointment and can find no justifying circumstances, even though 10 months have passed without a chairman. The waiting is less important than the consequences of what Mr. Granger did. I cannot and will not believe that Granger’s unilateral direction will not have undesirable consequences and there will be unsavoury implications.
We do not need more turmoil in Guyana to make people more mentally uncomfortable than they have been the past seventy years. I honestly believe what Granger did will make sections of Guyanese feel very uneasy living here. But more importantly, people have to know that when political instability and economic decline come, they affect the entire nation, not only those who rejected what the president did. They have a bearing on the lives of government supporters too.
Against this background, I cannot see how the analyst can exonerate Bharrat Jagdeo from the precipitation of this impasse. He created it. He is an instinctively undemocratic personality with stretching shadows of philistinism oozing from his ontology. The first list Mr. Jagdeo produced to the President was a depraved act of insult to the people of Guyana and the office of the presidency. But we must remember Jagdeo engaged in sickening violations of the sacredness of the office of the presidency before.
One recalls his role in the non-legal covenant with Ms. Varshnie Singh. The president knew that his arrangement with Ms. Singh was not covered with legal documentation, because he refused to sign the forms to make it legal. Yet she used the title of First Lady. Then came the concatenations of accusations of presidential mistreatment in the domestic sphere by Ms. Singh, which should have brought about the removal of Mr. Jagdeo as President.
The second assault on the sanctity of the presidency was the labyrinth connection between the state and high criminals, best exemplified in the role of Roger Khan. Our iconic scholar, Clive Thomas then coined the term, the “criminalized state.” The third insult to the office of presidency by Mr. Jagdeo came ten months ago when he was not President, but still held the powerful and respected title of Opposition Leader.
He submitted a list of names for the position of GECOM chairman and it was simply an act of shameless philistinism. Judging by his composition of that list, Mr. Jagdeo had no respect for the country he once led as president for exactly three American presidential terms – that is, twelve years. Ms. Ryhaan Shah has no record of public service, claimed that she was essentially and quintessentially an Indian being, and thirdly, publicly stated that she only found the state to be undemocratic and government to be defective in governance after the APNU+AFC coalition came into office. This was one of Jagdeo’s selections.
There was Dr. James Rose. He was three times an election candidate for Mr. Jagdeo’s party – twice in national elections and once in local government elections in 1994. There was Normal McLean, one of the most controversial citizens in Guyana, going back to 1970. That is 47 years of a controversial life. McLean was once accused by the US Embassy of forging a document, charged and placed before the courts.
Included in the second list was an Appeal Court judge who ruled in favour of the very man nominating him to be GECOM’s chair. Justice B.S. Roy ruled in favour of Jagdeo in the presidential two-term limitation. It was this same Appeal Court judge that upped a libel judgement against the Kaieteur News from $5 million to $15 million, which the Caribbean Court of Justice struck out.
Included in a third list was the wife of the lawyer who did the court case against the two-term limitation for Mr. Jagdeo. You cannot blame a wife for her husband’s professional associations, but it would raise questions of objectivity, thus her name should not have been offered.
We could go on, but the point is Mr. Jagdeo simply toyed with the country, the constitution and the president. Unfortunately, an inexperienced president fell into a sophisticated trap that a sinister Jagdeo set. Using initiative and vision, Mr. Granger should have gone the way of wider consultations rather than a choice of his own.
