There wasn’t a “Coalition of the Willing” in Guyana

Oct 20, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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There may be Guyanese readers not familiar with what the “Coalition of the Willing” means. It refers to the countries that sent troops to Iraq in support of the American invasion. In Guyana, when the Government pointed to a “Guyana Consensus” on President Jagdeo’s denunciation of the EPA after the three-hour “consultation” at the Convention Centre, that was Guyana’s “Coalition of the Willing.”
The trouble is there wasn’t such a formation. If you follow Professor Clive Thomas’s weekly articles on the EPA in the Sunday Stabroek, you would think there was such a phenomenon.
For three straight weeks, Professor Clive Thomas has been telling his readers that the “consultations” were successful. They were not. Professor Thomas must have alarmed so many Guyanese that admire him (including this writer) by his persistence in painting the Convention Centre confabulation as a coming together of Guyanese minds. No such thing happened.
I could understand Professor Thomas’s absolute disbelief at some of the disadvantages to Caricom in the EPA, but the three-hour discussion on the views of Guyanese stakeholders is a separate issue that needs separate treatment from Dr. Thomas.
According to Chairman of the PNCR, Winston Murray, in a letter in the Stabroek (Sept. 10, 08) as a response to my contention that the PNC should not have participated in the Convention Centre “consultations” without a quid pro quo, the President wrote PNCR Parliamentarians individually, and not the PNCR leader. Mr. Murray’s correspondence spoke of the risks of the EPA for Caricom. There was no mention of any specific threat to Guyana’s economy. Surely, this could not have been an invitation for the PNCR to be consulted.
Aubrey Norton, at a subsequent press conference, sounded as if the PNCR as a party did not enter the Convention Centre.
One gets the impression, after listening to Mr. Norton, that Mr. Murray appeared as an Opposition Parliamentarian, and not as the representative of the PNCR. Professor Thomas ought to know by now of that grey area.
At these so-called consultations, there were no reports in the press of UG academics (except Professor Thomas), Red Thread and other NGOs, the Guyana Human Rights Association, the Guyana Action Party/ROAR, TUC, AFC, The Georgetown Chamber of Commerce, and other bodies expressing support against signing, or any matter connected to the EPA.
Still, Professor Thomas lets his readers know at the Convention Centre there were “trade unions, farmer organisations, cultural bodies, NGOs, the private sector, the media, academia, students, and political organisations.” These are Professor Thomas’s own words in his SN article of September 21, 08.
What Professor Thomas needs to tell us is if these groups were mere spectators, or if they actively supported President Jagdeo’s stance. If the latter is the case, then the Government’s PR gurus and the state media miserably failed President Jagdeo.
From September 6, the day after the “consultations”, to the time of writing, GINA and the state media have not informed the nation of the stakeholders at the Convention Centre that endorsed President’s Jagdeo’s anti-EPA position. If you accept what Dr. Thomas wrote, then the Guyana Government must be collapsing.
Here you have all these important stakeholders, who have accepted that the EPA is extremely flawed, lined up behind their President, and the Government has failed to glowingly quote from this mountain of solidarity it got. Since when has the PPP Government stopped showing off about the support it receives from the wider society? Or is Professor Thomas way off target?
Interestingly enough, after the confabulation of September 5, GINA announced the existence of a Guyana Consensus. But, strange enough, missing from the line up were those organisations that Professor Thomas enumerated. GINA named no names. Matters got more bizarre when a picket/demonstration took place outside the EU Embassy in Kingston last week. The Chronicle carried a photograph of the demonstrators, which it said was an umbrella body formed out of the Guyana Consensus. But, again, no names were named, and we didn’t see the students, academics, political organisations and cultural bodies that Dr. Thomas wrote about.
Of course, we know that the TUC, AFC and others have called upon the President to sign.
In another column I will try to analyze why Caricom leaders didn’t listen to President Jagdeo. It is sad, though, that Professor Thomas, with over forty years of political activism of vintage quality, could have allowed himself to be so deceived by the show on September 5 at the Convention Centre.
I once bitterly criticized Dr. Thomas for his terrible misreading of the Buxton violence in 2002-2004. Here he goes again. He needs to be very careful in the future.

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