Dear Editor,
I would like to add some reflective notes on your editorial for Stabroek Business captioned “The Customs racket: No one is protected” (08.04.14) and Mr. Kit Nascimento’s letter captioned “Broadcasters are held to a high standard of public responsibility” (08.04.19) on the four month suspension of channel 6 (Saturday). Whoever wrote the Stabroek Business editorial is not a person who studies political behaviour in Guyana. The commentator consistently cited strong and no-nonsense sentiments from Mr. Jagdeo as the President lamented corruption at the GRA wharf operations. But that is Mr. Jagdeo’s style. Mr. Jagdeo has been in power now for eight years and he has two convenient methodologies that in the end lacerate his credibility and cause disrespect for him by the citizenry.
One is that he prefers to deny the existence of embarrassing moments rather than diplomatically avoid that approach. Three times (not once or twice) Mr. Jagdeo intervened and scrapped the advertisement and search committee for a new Vice-Chancellor at UG. To date he denies that episode of presidential autocracy that Mr Burnham was far more learned and politically educated to avoid. Mr. Jagdeo went so far as to tell a post-press conference gathering that he didn’t know on the third occasion there was a search committee even though the search committee members are close working subordinates of the President.
In any democratic country, he would have been pressed to resign by the Opposition. Mr. Jagdeo is always carping about my columns in the Kaieteur News and he had the opportunity to see the end of me as an analyst. I openly challenged him to prove me wrong on the third UG fiasco and I would have resigned from UG and stopped writing for the Kaieteur News. I would have kept my word. Is this a president that citizens should believe when he speaks about his intentions?
