The Walcott-Jagdeo Carifesta clash: Who lost?

Aug 28, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

President Jagdeo may be twenty-five years younger than the Caribbean giant, Derek Walcott, one of three Caribbean Nobel Laureates (the other two: Arthur Lewis and VS Naipaul) but that does not mean he cannot challenge a theory or a hypothesis of Mr. Walcott.

No one should feel intellectually inferior to any thinker if their facts and research are strong. But in intellectual exchange, one has to know the theoretical turf one is operating on.

It was a mistake for the Guyanese President to challenge the Nobel Laureate on an area of Caribbean political economy for which there is no disagreement.

Mr. Jagdeo himself should know from the shape of his own policies the past nine years that Mr. Walcott was on winnable grounds.

Mr. Walcott’s deeply held belief is that Caribbean Governments do not spend on arts and culture. He is right. But of course, different Caricom territories have not got the same budget structure.

Jamaica for example is way ahead of the rest of the Anglo-phone Caribbean when it comes to satisfying Mr. Walcott’s wishes.

Guyana under the PPP Government is the main culprit. President Jagdeo replied and made a terrible judgement. If I was the advisor of Mr. Jagdeo and I was sitting next to him, I would have pulled him down in his seat.

The Guyanese President played right into the hands of VS Naipaul. If Naipaul was there, he would have given Mr. Jagdeo such a tongue-lashing that Mr. Jagdeo would have resigned immediately from his presidential post.

Mr. Jagdeo offered Mr. Walcott an explanation that would have got any Caribbean academic really mad. He intoned that there isn’t money left back from the necessities of nation-building to spend on the arts and culture. Walcott was livid.

Then came the impregnable point of the Nobel Laureate. Mr. Walcott told Mr. Jagdeo he has heard that explanation since he was a little boy. Walcott is now in his mid-seventies, so you could have imagined his exasperation.

One wonders what was going through the mind of the President when he made that statement, the implications of which are Naipaulian.

If money is the reason and we have been hearing that since independence in the sixties then Naipaul was right – Caribbean society cannot achieve maturity. If money was short in the sixties why are funds still not there eight years into the 21st century?

Ireland has the same population as Jamaica and Trinidad. Ireland was as poor as the Caricom states just ten years ago. Ireland today is the fastest growing European economy. Ireland puts finance into culture and education

One of the world’s top economies is Holland. Guyana is potentially richer than Holland and is 83,000 square miles compared to Holland’s 16,000.

Is the President of Guyana telling the Carifesta delegates/visitors that the Caricom states will never have money to spend on arts and culture?

What happened then to fifty years of sovereignty? What have we been doing with our economy since we became sovereign states?

Mr. Walcott could have devastated Mr. Jagdeo if he had done his homework on Guyana’s political economy before he came to Georgetown.

Of course, knowing Walcott, he would have said to himself that he had no time to research how the Guyana Government spends money.

It is unfortunate that the Nobel Laureate had to use the same broom to sweep all Caricom states. His statement though containing a large measure of tenability is not relevant to all the West Indian countries.

My feeling is that of all these nations, the PPP Government (and I am not singling out Mr. Jagdeo but emphasizing the PPP as a party) has placed and continues to place less emphasis on the world of aesthetics and culture in the administration of government in Guyana.

But more egregious is the fact that unlike all, and I repeat, all its Caricom partners, the PPP Government, and particular Mr. Jagdeo, as opposed to Presidents Cheddi Jagan and Janet Jagan, uses billions of dollars on the narrow use of power when that money could be spent on education and culture.

Do you know the billions that are wasted by the present PPP Government on patronage and incestuousness? This Government’s gas bill is stupendous. Hundreds of millions could be saved in this area.

Hundreds of millions are spent on rent paid by the Government of Guyana to landlords who are party supporters.

I wonder if Mr. Walcott knows about the absurdity of Caricom’s monthly rent. That large sum of American dollars could be used on sport facilities in the region.

I should have been there to tell Mr. Walcott about the mistreatment of education by the Government of Guyana. Can someone give me Mr. Walcott’s e-mail address?