Dear Editor,
On the cusp of the strong possibility of a change of government in Guyana, the Granger caretaker administration has made a number of unbelievably wrong moves in the international arena.
The first wrong move was made at home when the Ministry of the Presidency initiated an abrupt internal shake-up at the Foreign Ministry. Lame excuses were made to the effect that the shake-up was aimed at “professionalising” Guyana’s diplomatic service and more funnily, in the light of a date set for elections. Incidentally, speaking about “professionalising” the Foreign Service, wasn’t it Mr Granger, who, in 2016, appointed a number of politicians as Heads of Missions and who he is now recalling under the pretext of “professionalising” the Foreign Service?
In making this pronouncement, the president exposed his cloven hooves. His utterances betrayed a cynical, yet uncanny reassurance that his re-election is reassured, when it is not.
Mr Granger is free to make whatever changes he wishes to make at Guyana’s Foreign Service, but he must be aware of the inevitability that when he loses at the elections, a new government will be equally free to make whatever changes it wishes at the Foreign Service. His actions therefore can only be described as self-inflicted wounds on his caretaker administration.
According to the president, the removal of the former Director General should be viewed as “a promotion and not a demotion” since the intention is to post her to one of Guyana’s overseas missions.
This is a totally absurd proposition. It is an established practice that all members of staff of the Foreign Ministry, including Heads of Missions, must report to and receive instructions from the Director General. Now, the former DG in her next life, will be reporting to and taking instructions from her successor now designated a Permanent Secretary. If this is not a demotion then what is?
The deceptive and duplicitous statements on the part of the caretaker president will fool no one.
Those of us who lived through the Burnham dictatorship would easily discern the similarities in the diplomatic gallivanting and opportunistic forum shopping between the then Burnham dictatorship and the extant Granger caretaker administration.
What the caretaker Granger administration either fails, or pretends not to understand, is that whether it is at the ACP, or at the G77 and China, the governments of the member states are fully aware of the consequences of the no confidence motion and the instability of the caretaker government of Guyana.
In this respect, the naivety of the caretaker administration is mind-boggling to say the least.
It goes after the Chair of the G77 and China as if holding chairmanship of the group will give its tattered image at home a shot in the arm at the global level.
We all know that the president’s intention is to hitch his ramshackle coalition to the G77 and China and to use the UN body as a cover in case it risks either postponing or rigging the much anticipated elections in Guyana.
Unfortunately for the caretaker administration, within the membership of the G77 and China, there are members of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group, the ACP, the OIC, the OAS and CARICOM, all of whose leaders are au fait with the administration’s track record where, for 439 days, as if on a horse and chariot, it continues to ride roughshod over the Constitution of the Republic of Guyana.
While representatives of these countries will behave diplomatically correct towards Guyana during its symbolic chairmanship of the G77 and China, they will, nevertheless, continue to pursue their own permanent interests. A tour d’horizon of the speeches made by representatives of many of the G77 countries at the last UNGA will show that their foreign policies do not necessarily coincide with Guyana’s.
And as it is in multilateral diplomacy, even though Guyana as chairman of the group may wish to succinctly pursue its national interests by hitching its electoral wagon onto the multilateral interests of the G77 and China, such efforts will be well-nigh impossible.
Guyana’s chairmanship of the G77 and China will be more symbolic than substantive. No positive results would be achieved other than declaratory and highfalutin commitments to fulfill due to the lack of financial resources. All the talk that Guyana’s “election as G77 Chair has been hailed as a timely tribute to all Guyanese with recognition of the good standing and capacity of the country to effectively undertake responsibilities at the highest levels of the international community” and, that it is in “keeping with its deep commitment to principled conduct and the rule of law…” will be viewed as mere rhetoric and self-serving, principally because the government of Guyana is seen by the international community as a weak and lame duck administration unsure of its ability to secure a second term in office.
That aside, as if to give the lie to its “good standing and capacity of the country to serve at the highest levels of the international community,” the caretaker administration not only abandoned the much larger 79-member and prestigious ACP Group, it resiled from participating in the recent ACP Summit in Nairobi, Kenya.
These moves must be seriously questioned since they represent poor, haphazard and uncoordinated foreign policy formulation by the caretaker administration.
The Georgetown Agreement is the cornerstone of the ACP Group. Guyana has been a respected and longstanding member of the ACP. Our country has benefitted enormously from financial instruments/schemes established between the ACP and the European Union such as the EDF, Sysmin, Stabex, the Sugar and Rice Protocols before they were abolished, save for the EDF.
Guyana currently holds the post of Secretary General of the ACP Organisation. It must have been a grave embarrassment and humiliating to say the least, for the Guyanese Ambassador to the ACP and his Guyanese counterpart as Secretary General, to have received news that Guyana of all ACP countries would not be fulfilling its responsibilities at the highest level of the ACP.
The point here is that a transformed ACP is likely to bring greater economic and trade benefits to Guyana in the medium and long term, rather than the G77 and China, where the ambassadors meet to talk shop and engage in discussions that will be more political and ideological in nature.
The ACP/EU Sugar Protocol is now history, yet from all indications, government lacks a clear roadmap as regards its endgame for the sugar industry. Because the price of ACP sugar on the EU market is residual, sugar exports to Europe have virtually ceased. Approximately 24,000 of the 110,000 tonnes of our sugar is consumed locally while approximately 70,000 and 15,000 tonnes are exported to the US and CARICOM respectively.
Under any APNU+AFC coalition administration, the expectation that sugar production will jump from 110,000 tonnes (2019) to 160,000 tonnes in 2025 is a pipe dream. This target is more achievable with the PPP/C in government.
What makes this goal even more unrealistic with the APNU+AFC in office is the lack of public consultation and adequate consideration by stakeholders as regards a business plan, an expansion programme, and transparency about where investments will come from to turn the industry around. Moreover, questions have arisen whether the plant to produce white sugar should be located at Albion or Skeldon and whether it could produce white sugar in three years, beginning from 2020.
All the aforementioned, the wrong moves by the caretaker administration in the three theaters of negotiations, have occurred because of bureaucratic inertia, incompetence, poor formulation and coordination of foreign policy coupled with a lack of direction and a sense of priority. The cumulative effect will ultimately result in disaster for Guyana at home and abroad so long as the APNU+AFC continues to hang on to office.
Yours faithfully,
Clement J Rohee
Former Minister of Foreign Trade
and International Cooperation
