Discretion, tact and subtlety are not characteristics by which the PPP is normally distinguished, and so it came as no particular surprise last week when they went trampling diplomatic niceties underfoot to deliver yet another round of invective against representatives of foreign missions here. Having sent former US Ambassador Brent Hardt off to Washington with a “feral blast,” delivered on that occasion by Minister of Education Priya Manickchand, the government this time turned on outgoing British High Commissioner Andrew Ayre, whom Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon labelled a “pariah.”
On Monday of last week High Commissioner Ayre had told the media at a news conference that Guyana was on a “dangerous path,” and the fact that parliament had been prorogued on November 10 last year and had not been reconvened was a “clear breach” of the Commonwealth Charter and the Constitution of Guyana. He was also quoted as saying in answer to a question from this newspaper, that “Guyana could be subjected to a critical review because of the breaches of the Commonwealth Charter.” Guyana, of course, is a signatory to that charter.
When asked about whether bilateral aid from the UK could be affected, High Commissioner Ayre responded: “Without a parliament there is no parliamentary oversight of development assistance… Clearly the appetite to send money to a country that has no parliamentary oversight is much reduced.” He then went on to ask rhetorically how the British government could justify to its own taxpayers sending development funds in such circumstances.
It is this which appears to have caused the government and ruling party apoplexy, and inspired Dr Luncheon to embark on his own personal excursion into calumny. He described Mr Ayre as “terribly dishonourable,” and went on to refer to the “recent EU dishonouring” of its agreement with the Government of Guyana in relation to budgetary support. The Cabinet Secretary accused the British High Commissioner of “sinisterly and conspiratorially” revealing the handiwork of the UK and EU in the matter, at a later stage going on to tell reporters that the threat to withhold development aid was “most dastardly.”
Up to this point no one had ever heard any mention of the European Union withholding budgetary support, let alone as implied by Dr Luncheon, that this might be connected to the suspension of parliament. Be that as it may, the HPS’s grumblings about ‘dastardly’ sanctions ignore the obvious point that Mr Ayre made, namely, that the British government is answerable to its taxpayers for the money it gives in aid. (The same, it might be said, would be true of Europe.) Since the Guyana Government has for a long time now ceased to see the need to be answerable to its taxpayers, it has simply forgotten how real democracies work.
If the Head of the Presidential Secretariat favoured the crude approach, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs went for the inapposite one. There it was, burbling in a press release, that Minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett had contacted Common-wealth Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma who had told her there had been no discussion on Guyana either with the British government or its High Commissioner in Georgetown. Needless to say, the British High Commissioner did not say what the ministry is averring he said. As quoted above he told the media that “Guyana could be subjected to a critical review…” but it was “not on the verge of being suspended from the Commonwealth.”
There is one of two possibilities here: either Takuba Lodge is so seriously challenged in terms of comprehending the English language that it should be closed down immediately, or Stalinist style it was seeking to bring the UK critic into disrepute by deliberately distorting what was said in order to prove him wrong. One assumes that the first of these possibilities is very unlikely to apply, and so we are left with the second, carried out presumably at the instigation of the government and ruling party. It would not have done either them or the ministry much good; the Commonwealth Secretariat would have soon made it their business to find out exactly what Mr Ayre had said, and the Government of Guyana would have been left looking foolish, if not dissembling.
And after all of that, the following day, Foreign Minister Rodrigues-Birkett told the Caricom Community Council of Ministers that an announcement on general elections was “imminent.” A bewildered population could only wonder what Dr Luncheon’s tirade and the Foreign Ministry’s foray into inappositeness could have been all about. Was it just a clumsy way of saving face when they knew they would have to name a poll date soon? Their mood could not have been improved when it emerged that US Chargé d’Affaires Bryan Hunt had added a low-key voice to the exchange by telling this newspaper, “I think the primary focus needs to be at this stage on moving towards free and fair elections.”
Conversely, of course, the Minister’s statement to the Caricom Council might just have been a holding tactic, and the word ‘imminent’ is due to undergo a semantic revision at the hands of the inaptly named Freedom House.
It has been obvious to everyone for a long time that the PPP is in no hurry to go to elections, for reasons which hardly need elaboration. They probably recognize that there will have to be a national poll this year, but would like to postpone it as long as possible to give them time to dispense largesse in the Amerindian areas, and bring members of their straying heartland constituency back into the fold. They will, of course, also have to sort out internal party matters, including the presidency and prime ministership. Their only consolation may lie in the fact that the opposition, particularly the main opposition, seems a long way from being election-ready either.
Whether a date is about to be announced or not, one cannot think that there was anything to be gained by transgressing diplomatic protocols to the extent which Dr Luncheon did by his contumely, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did by its misrepresentation. Guyana is not Russia, or even Venezuela; it is a very small nation which exists in the company of not a few giants, and serious long-term damage may well have been done to our relations with the Western world. No one can know when this country may need to call on the backing of any one of those countries, and if they are lukewarm in providing it in the future, the ruling party and government would only have themselves to blame.
The worst of it is, of course, that the Western envoys to whom the PPP/C government has taken exception have principle on their side, while it is the administration which has lost contact with democratic norms. It must be the ultimate irony – more especially considering that Dr Cheddi Jagan spent so much time pleading with the Western nations to intervene and restore democracy here – that there has been a reversal of roles, and the PPP is now in the same position that the PNC found itself in 1992.
Lastly, one is forced to reflect on whether the PPP really knows what the word ‘honour’ means.
