Of Reports and Biases

May 16, 2010 Editorial

There was time, not so long ago when – in line with our well deserved reputation as a tropical backwater – the rest of the world seemed to take very little interest in our doings. Every decade or so a particular egregious happenstance might bring us a fleeting notoriety – the removal of the newly elected PPP government in 1953, then again in the 60’s, the mass suicide of the Jim Jones commune in the 70’s come to mind.
But after our fifteen minutes in the sun, our profile would quickly subside into its everyday nondescript blandness as it did after Jonestown for over two decades. With the coming of the new millennium, however, all that appears to have changed. Is it us or is it a sign of the (new) times? Or is it a bit of both?
There is no question that the world – especially the state system that constitutes it has changed drastically since WWII – bringing even small countries like ours to the attention of others on occasion. Very early on, the formation of the UN – even with the dominance of the west – placed burdens of reporting the conditions of the colonies.
Our politicians took advantage of these opportunities to bring the colonial power to task when, for instance, they dragged their feet on the granting of our independence. During the Cold War, the west chafed under the scrutiny by the Communist bloc and the Third World and frequently rejected reports of its overreaching and excess.
Of recent, however, especially after the end of the Cold War, the tables have been turned. The west has seen the utility of using the UN (and its several agencies) to put pressure on nominally independent countries by ostensibly pursuing universally accepted values such as Human Rights and its subset of Indigenous Rights. In 2006, the UN General Assembly created a Universal Periodic Review (UPR) as an integral aspect of the work of the UN Human Rights Council. Mandated to meet every four years, it scrutinises reports on the human rights performance of every member country –along with critiques made and questions asked by interested national and international bodies.
The western countries, as the US, the UK and Norway have presently done on the Guyanese submission, have the wherewithal to ask questions of countries that they identify, while their own performance or the performance of their client states, generally escape such a strict examination.
This is not to say that states such as Guyana should not live up to the provisions of international agreements that they have signed on to. They definitely should be held responsible for violations – as should all errant states.
But the opposition elements that are gleefully rubbing their hands at the anticipated censure that the Government may receive from the UN body – as it already has from the UK and the US – cannot have it both ways.
If they accept the legitimacy of a UN body censuring the government for some actions (or inaction) in some areas it must also accept the legitimacy of one or another organ of the UN showering accolades on the government or its officers. They should not cavil as they have done at the designation by a UN agency of President Jagdeo as a “Champion of the Earth” for his efforts to reorient Guyana’s developmental thrust into a greener trajectory.
Then there were the reports by the Heritage Foundation on the “economic freedom” (or lack thereof) existing in Guyana. The president has correctly identified the right-wing bias of this organisation. Under its influence the wave of deregulation from the eighties onwards was ushered into the US and by proxy the UK under Reagan and Thacher respectively.
We know where those policies, which stressed market fundamentalism as the answer to every economic question, got us: the deepest world recession in seventy years. And we’re still not out of the woods.
But analogously, supporters of the government have to acknowledge the ideological bias of the World Bank and the IMF that ever so often issue glowing reports on the performance of the Guyanese economy. Every reviewing and reporting organisation is “coming from somewhere”. The trick is to figure out whether they have Guyana’s interests at heart.

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