Monica Lewinsky, Janet Jagan and elected dictatorship in Guyana

Feb 17, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Mrs. Janet Jagan wrote some unacceptable but nevertheless interesting columns for her party newspaper. Some were penned just months before her death. On reading these essays, you wonder what would have happened if Mrs. Jagan’s mental fatigue brought about by Desmond Hoyte’s street pressure did not occur and she had stayed on in the presidency.
Months before her death, Mrs. Jagan’s columns directed blazing fury at the United States. It was if she knew she was going and wanted to take a last stand against the Americans.
Some of the anti-American fire was childish. She thought that Guyana had a more superior medical service than the US based on the fact that in Guyana, such facilities are free.
She pointed to an episode where free clinics were held in one of the American states and attendees were in the thousands. It never occurred to this lady that her own party leadership sought medical refuge in the US when they and their family members took ill in this country. She took a few digs at American democracy, cynically pointing to its superiority as a myth.
On reading Mrs. Jagan’s anti-American tirades in her remaining months on earth, it was clear that she felt that America was praised too much around the world for values that were deceptive.
Mrs. Jagan has gone to her grave without realizing that even if her condemnations of American society, its democratic structures and its value system were true, her own government was no better example.
Mrs. Jagan has left this world without understanding, I presume, that you cannot call a man a thief while you jump the neighbour’s fence and steal his eggs. It never occurred to Mrs. Jagan that for all its faults, American democracy had superior features that Guyana is millions of miles away from.
We can begin the defence of this thesis by citing the Monica Lewinsky/Bill Clinton scandal. The world would never have heard about President Clinton’s sexual encounters in his office with Ms. Lewinsky if it weren’t for FBI officials who were inflexible in their belief that no one was above the law.
FBI officers took Ms. Lewinsky to a high rise complex and began to question her without her lawyer being present. Lewinsky didn’t know that she could have objected to their interrogation because she had a right to an attorney. It was after she signed incriminating statements that she was told by her advisers that the FBI should have read her rights to her. By then it was too late; she had given evidence that landed Mr. Clinton in boiling water.
In Guyana, the CID officers would have been dismissed and the Guyanese Lewinsky would have been hounded down instead of the President. How dare any policeman in Guyana question a person making accusations against the Head of State? That policeman should at first inform the particular Minister who would decide if there should be any action.
Assistant Commissioner Paul Slowe must be smiling if he is reading this. While in charge of Berbice, then Home Affairs Minister, Ronald Gajraj ordered him to return the firearm of a person that the police had arrested but released. Mr. Slowe cited the law that insulates the police from political interference.
He refused the edict and was promptly transferred to Georgetown. Some feel that incident had led to the sidelining of Slowe.
Two weeks ago, a complaint was made against a party official who holds a prestigious public post. The guy did report to the station but promptly gave the officer in charge a tongue-lashing, and simply walked out.
The eyewitnesses to the accident that took the life of Minister Desrey Fox told the media that the ambulance had its horn blazing but the Minister’s driver just went through the crossing. Anywhere in the world when you hear a police or ambulance siren, you either have to stop or give way.
The ambulance driver was suspended without pay. At the time of writing, I don’t know if he has been reinstated. Was it because a Minister was involved?
Mrs. Jagan, I presume, did know how her party officials became untouchables in the elected dictatorship under her PPP Government. A person very close to her beat up a young man with his revolver then had the police arrest the victim.
Mrs. Jagan closed ranks with her party over her protégé. I could go on to enumerate many other episodes involving Mrs. Jagan where her protégés were above the law with her knowledge. So which democracy is superior – Guyanese or American?

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Monica Lewinsky, Janet Jagan and elected dictatorship in Guyana

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