HONORIFIC
April 2, 2016 | By KNews | Filed Under Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom, http://www.kaieteurnewsonline....016/04/02/honorific/
The government has gone overboard in its handling of the controversy involving the granting of an honorific title to a businessman. The government has reacted impulsively and hastily in rescinding the award.
There was no need for the government to react, much less to overreact. The appointment was harmless and costless. It was described by the person who made it as being honorific. It was given out of sense of recognition.
Those appointments do not have to be made public. But someone wanted to embarrass the Minister who made the appointment and so they leaked it to the media.
The rescinding of the appointment has created two sets of problems. The first is the public embarrassment that has been meted out to the Minister of State who made the appointment. Instead of waiting until the Minister returned to get his explanation, the appointment was hastily rescinded in the most contemptuous of manner, via a one line announcement in the media.
This has put the Minister in a most embarrassing situation and one that he did not deserve.
There was a better way for the government to handle this matter rather than to simply respond to criticisms in the media by rescinding the appointment as a means of distancing itself from the businessman in question.
Honorific appointments are not unusual. The AFC gave out many honorific appointments when the government first came in. The AFC appointed many persons as Advisors of Diaspora Affairs. These were honorific appointments. APNU followed soon after and did the same.
The government is now suddenly trying to put distance between itself and the person whose honorific appointment it recently rescinded. But this is hypocrisy.
The person was engaged in helping to clean up the city just after the government came to power. How come the government did not rescind that offer of help which must have run into tens of millions of dollars? Pay back the man for the money he spent on that exercise!
The same person was reported in the media as donating a bus to the initiative which the government is promoting? How come the government accepted the donation of the bus but now wants to rescind the appointment of the man as a Ministerial Advisor on Business? Pay back the man for the money he spent on the bus!
There are reports that the said individual may have also contributed to the works taking place at Durban Park. If this is so, the government must explain why it accepted that help and the value of that help. Pay back the man whatever he gave for the sprucing up of Durban Park!
The government cannot have it both ways. It cannot be taking support from the businessman for government projects and then publicly humiliating the man. The fact that this is exactly what is being done demands that those businessmen who are bending over backwards to help the government keep the city clean and to develop Durban Park and to provide buses and boats to take children to school should learn from what has happened to that businessman whose appointment was rescinded.
That businessman should ask back for his money. He should demand that he be paid for the assistance rendered during the clean-up exercise. He should demand his money back for the bus he donated to the government.
If he did make a contribution to the ongoing works at Durban Park he should ask to be repaid.
The government cannot simply be using business people like that. The business people in turn must decide now whether they will continue to offer assistance to the government in the works at Durban Park and in the clean-up of the city.
They should learn from the experience of the rescinding of the honorific appointment.