Peeping Tom - COOL DOWN, BHARRAT! COOL DOWN!

Peeping Tom – COOL DOWN, BHARRAT! COOL DOWN!

Jun 10, 2008 Peeping Tom

“When you see a man of worth, think of how you may emulate him. When you see one who is unworthy, examine yourself.” – Confucius

I have never known a society to be at peace with itself where there is an absence of respect for the elderly; and, more especially, where that respect is lacking at the level of the leadership.

I want to believe that Bharrat Jagdeo is liked amongst the elderly in Guyana. I believe that the old people of this country are extremely grateful for all that he has done, in raising their pensions and in providing services which they never enjoyed before.

I want to believe that Bharrat Jagdeo is a good person and that he holds a great deal of respect for his elders, both within and outside of his party.

However, he is human and thus subject to imperfections. There have been times when he has said things that have conveyed the wrong impression.

I do not hold these things against him, because I accept that he works under a great deal of pressure and therefore there are times when he will be both misinterpreted and times when he himself will say or do something that he will later regret.

The greatest obstacle to personal and social harmony is our ego. If we can learn to suppress our egos, we can learn to accept that not everything that we disagree with is a criticism; if we learn to be tolerant of the views of others, if we resist the compulsion to always prove ourselves right, even when we know we are wrong, we will find greater peace of mind and respect in this world.

The President of Guyana needs to find peace of mind. For some time now, he has been allowing himself to be rattled by statements made by others. Not so long ago, he exposed his vulnerability at a press conference when he got testy at a reporter who asked him about a torture report.

Then, just a few nights ago, he took umbrage at something said by Guyana’s leading entrepreneur, Yesu Persaud. He launched into an outburst, accusing the old man of falling into the trap of the ignorant.

Then he did a most disrespectful thing by saying he had asked the Head of the Privatization Unit to organise a seminar on the country’s taxation laws and he hoped Persaud would attend.

If the original outburst was uncalled for, the suggestion that Yesu needed to be edified about the country’s tax laws was an unkind and cruel cut, unwarranted and quite inappropriate. It was perhaps something that the President now regrets. I ask Yesu Persaud to forgive him.

Yesu Persaud is an old man, old enough to be our President’s father. Bharrat Jagdeo owes his presidency to this man, because it was Yesu Persaud who was mainly instrumental in bringing to this country the “Three Wise Men of CARICOM,” who helped resolve the political impasse following the 1997 elections.

Without that intervention, which was orchestrated by Yesu Persaud and which resulted in Hoyte acceding to a CARICOM audit of the elections and the shortening of the term of the PPP to three years, the PPP would have found itself being unable to govern this country.

Bharrat Jagdeo might never have had a chance at becoming President had that impasse not been resolved; and therefore to now see him publicly chastise a man old enough to be his father is clearly unfortunate. No one should ever become that powerful as to do what the President did to Yesu on Thursday night.

Yesu Persaud, I believe, will take it in good stride, as he has done throughout the years with all those who have insulted him. Yesu Persaud is a success story in this country.

He runs the largest corporate outfit in Guyana after the Guyana Sugar Corporation, and he has run it successfully over the years. He is the greatest entrepreneur this country has ever produced, and no one should disrespect him in the way our President did.

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