A question Minister Jeffrey must answer

Nov 24, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Readers of this column would know that my October 16th piece, “The Rise and Fall of Henry Jeffrey” was on the imminent departure of the Minister from the cabinet. In that article, I could not state the reason because I could have opened up myself to libel. Funny how the media move slowly in this country! Since September, Minister Jeffrey had moved into exit gear. In that October 16th column, I briefly traced the history of Dr. Jeffrey going back to 1974. He remains for me one of the politicians that only made it big because Cheddi Jagan lacked the leadership quality of conceptual complexity which enables a leader to carefully and astutely assess the nuances of human personality.
There is no need to return to the contents of that October essay. Let us examine the present controversy to see if we can push Dr. Jeffrey in a direction that he is morally obliged to go since he has already spoken frankly of the disagreement he has had with the President on the acceptance of the EPA, according to this newspaper (The Stabroek News has a different version of why Minister Jeffrey is leaving; I prefer to stick with Kaieteur’s interpretation). Can Minister Jeffrey explain to the people of this country if he served the Cabinet as a member of an organization that had a partnership in government with the PPP? From the PPP’s perspective, the Guyana Government since 1992 is a coalition. First, with the PPP and the Civic Component. Then from 2001, TUF came on board.
If the answer is yes, then, can the Minister explain the organizational shape of the Civic Component? Is there a structural entity named the Civic Component? Who are its office-bearers? What specific social agenda it has? Are there lines of ideological departures from the belief-system of the PPP? Is there an identical overlapping of conceptualizations? Can the Minister tell us: what is the operational mode of the Civic in relation to policy-making in the Government of Guyana? By this I mean, has the Civic ever requested specific legislation and got it? Has the Civic ever reached a deadlock with the PPP and there was compromise with the concessions given to the Civic?
What about past Ministers? Did the Civic agree to the release of Dale Bisnauth? If Dr. Bisnauth chose to go, then fine. If not why would a government not want a highly trained scholar who has authored many scholarly texts? Which section of the Government did Sasenarine Kowlessar represent? Has the Civic ever requested state sector consultancies and public sector placements for its own people? Finally, what is the position of the Civic in relation to the imbroglio over the EPA?
These are questions Minister Jeffrey must answer. Now that he has spoken to the media about the EPA controversy, he is obliged to go further and explain this long-standing mystery about the Civic. In my caption above, I did not use the plural; I wrote “a question.” There is one compulsory question the Minister must answer. He can ignore the other inquiries. He must answer one question upfront – is there an entity in a coalition government with the PPP by the name of the Civic?
As an analyst that has written about politics the past twenty years, I know what the reaction of Dr. Jeffrey will be. He will not respond. Dr. Jeffrey has never written a line about the nature of the Burnham Government that he has served so faithfully. So many former officials of the Burnham administration have offered their opinions on the strengths and faults of Mr. Burnham. They range from Festus Brotherson, Elvin Mc David, Laurie Lewis, Major-General Joe Singh, etc.
So is there a coalition government in Georgetown and has been so since 1992? The answer is yes and no. Yes in the sense that the mighty, chauvinistic communist, Cheddi Jagan had to bow to American pressure to have non-PPP, non-communist personnel from civic society in his government if he won the 1992 elections. Once he refused that request, the Americans would have kept him out in favour of Desmond Hoyte. He complied faithfully after 1992. But the Americans didn’t keep an eye on how power was exercised. The Civic never had an independent base under the Cheddi Jagan Government. The show was a PPP one. After Jagan’s death and the victory of the inflexible communist, Mrs. Jagan in 1997, and the violence that followed, the concept and life of the Civic was burnt to ashes in the conflagration. From thereon, the Government of Guyana was and is a thoroughly PPP affair. Who chooses to believe otherwise is a monumental fool.

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