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Presidential respect and dignity

Jul 22, 2008 Editorial

There has been widespread comment on the banning of Mr Gordon Moseley from covering the President at the Office of the President (OP) and at State House. Spokespersons for the President have made it clear as to the reason for the ban.

In the words of Dr. Prem Misir, Head of the OP’s Press and Public Affairs Unit, Mr Moseley was made “persona non grata… as a direct result of reproachful and disrespectful comments on the Head of State in his letter to the press.”

The cited letter, published in this newspaper, dealt with the President’s ascerbic reaction to a report filed by Mr Moseley on a meeting the President had with Guyanese resident in Antigua.

In perusing the offending letter one can only conclude that the portion that earned the Presidential ire was Mr Moseley’s reference to the latter’s “wild and uninformed ramblings about the media”.

The question of “respect” for the President has been raised. Few would deny the proposition that in the abstract, the President of a country ought to be respected – after all as Head of State he represents the country to the rest of the world.

But in this day and age this stricture has to be balanced against the older adage that respect is earned not demanded.

This is the age of democracy; the President is not a monarch and even they used to be lampooned on occasions.

If the truth be told, the press itself was born coterminous with democracy and carved out its role as being the defender of the people’s interests.

While it was not “political” in the sense of running for office it was inevitably “political” since it was always on the lookout for instances where the Leviathan was infringing on the ultimate sovereign – the people, and to point those infringements out.

If the government and its head would like to be defined as “democratic” it has to get used to a press that, at best, will look at it cagily.

One unfortunate feature of our political culture is that while we mouth fashionable words and slogans we have almost no experience of their normal usage.

Our colonial heritage ensured that while we may talk about the democratic forms, our model was a very autocratic one in which the Chief Executive, the Governor, was the representative of the Queen of Britain and her Empire.

While Guyana may have been the very definition of “colonial backwater”, the Queen’s representative still had to keep up the forms. To act otherwise would be to give the natives ‘ideas” above their station.

The Governor therefore insisted that everyone literally bow and scrape before him as an act to keep the Empire intact. Those days, however, are long gone.

And this brings us to the question as to how does the modern ruler garner respect? We can do no worse than look at the example of the President of the USA, which has replaced Britain as the greatest power on Earth.

In the US, the President does not try to browbeat respect but works to earn it – primarily on the criterion of competence.

Mr Moseley’s criticism of the President as offering “wild and uninformed ramblings about the media” goes to the issue of competence.

In the USA, to stave off this very criticism, before the President faces the media on any issue, he undergoes a very thorough and extensive vetting on that issue by members of his staff – as a matter of course.

Almost every conceivable question is thrown at him and answers are crafted that would lend to the President’s responses the requisite gravity.

The answers do not even have to be on point, but the main concern is that the President never, ever should just “wing” it.

This is the route to disaster and loss of respect. It is our position that the populace, including the media, ought to respect the President.

But “ought”, as Immanuel Kant pointed out, implies “can”. The President has to conduct his press conferences and other interactions with the media and the people in a manner that ensures that they can respect him.

The President has to hark to the motto of the Boys’ Scouts: Be Prepared. Respect is earned and dignity comes from within.

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