There is no mistaking the uniqueness of Bharrat Jagdeo as a Guyanese politician and public figure. None of his predecessors has held the office of President for a longer period, none but he, up until now, has served more than a single term in office. None, moreover, held office at a more ‘tender’ age. Even today, seven years after he left office Bharrat Jagdeo is still younger than any other Guyanese President, alive or dead. Those credentials eminently qualify him to be termed unique.
Mr. Jagdeo’s uniqueness saddles him with a demanding clutch of responsibilities. He remains Leader of the People’s Progressive Party. That is his substantive day to day job. But his responsibilities do not end there. The privilege of having served as the nation’s President saddles him with other equally weighty obligations, not least those that have to do with his role as an elder statesman, the word ‘elder’ in this instance being used in an experiential context rather than in a chronological one. The fact is that all of Guyana, political affiliations set aside, are entitled to benefit from his unique clutch of credentials. That is a service that Mr. Jagdeo owes the nation.
When – and it is not all that frequently – politicians arrive at that juncture they must assume a more measured, more sober, less partisan posture. They must, somehow, find a way to serve Party and Nation, simultaneously, vigorously advocating policies designed to secure support at the polls but be ever mindful not to allow a preoccupation with partisan politics to compromise what, in essence, is a wider and arguably weightier responsibility to the nation that goes with their credentials as statesmen and patriots.
Bharrat Jagdeo, over the years, has proven to be a combative politician. He is forever animated, hardly ever failing in his public pronouncements to take a tilt at his political opponents, in the present instance, the APNU-AFC administration. In so doing, mind you, he is satisfying the expectations of his political constituency. There can be no faulting that there are times, though, when the frenetic cut and thrust of the combative culture, ingrained as it is in Bharrat Jagdeo, causes him to slip his moorings, in which instances he appears inclined to set aside the expectations of the constituency that is all of Guyana and embrace instead what we assume to be the preferences of a narrower constituency. .
It is for the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) to say whether its invitation to Mr. Jagdeo to perform the duties as Guest Speaker at its Gala Dinner a week ago were attended by any particular directives and/or expectations though we doubt very much that that would have been the case. It would have been altogether appropriate to ask him to perform that function not only because it is customary for political personages and ministers of government to be asked to perform such duties but because they are qualified, both by training and experience, to do so. Mr. Jagdeo, one might add is as qualified as anyone else to be invited to share his perspective on issues of business and the economy – certainly including oil and gas -with the Chamber’s guests.
As it happens, what transpired at the Chamber function on Wednesday evening last was that Mr. Jagdeo, perhaps predictably, slipped his moorings, choosing to subsume such perspectives as he doubtless possesses on matters to do with national development and instead to further exacerbate what is already a divisive political discourse on oil. His, in the circumstances, could have been a more sober, more thoughtful perspective on oil and Guyana’s future, not, one assumes, a particularly difficult task for Mr. Jagdeo. That is not what he chose to do. His was, in part, a political rant an excursion into the very ‘doom and gloom’ syndrome about which former US Ambassador to Guyana Perry Holloway cautioned not too long ago and it was pointed enough to elicit a terse response from the government in circumstances where responses to presentations of that nature are rare.
Here is part of what Mr. Jagdeo had to say to his audience: “Even the oil companies, because they talk to me, they don’t have such a rosy picture of the fortunes of Guyana changing drastically, dramatically in the timeframe that we think it will happen. It will happen, but it will happen not from 2020 to 2025, those will be rough years for us… There is a timeline to all of these things, it’s not going to happen immediately.”
No one, not even the government, has suggested that the early years of oil exploitation will be attended by a miracle cure for all of Guyana’s socio-economic ills. Even amongst those of us who have been uplifted by the realization that oil and the returns therefrom are now no longer a pipe dream, there exists an acute awareness that a turnaround in our developmental circumstances will not coincide with the advent of ‘first oil’ or even with the years that will immediately follow. The Chamber’s guests last Wednesday evening and the nation as a whole did not need an earful from the Opposition Leader to become aware of that and one suspects that rather than evoking a sense of general satisfaction deriving from an informed and generally satisfying presentation, there were those in Mr. Jagdeo’s audience who would have departed the Pegasus with no more than a timely reminder of the resonance of Ambassador Holloway’s words of a few days earlier. There are those who would probably have said afterwards that the tone and content of much of what he had to say did not do justice to his obligation beyond his role as Leader of the Opposition. But then that is Mr. Jagdeo’s way.
