President Jagdeo’s fatal mistake in understanding American democracy

Apr 22, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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There is much more about American democracy and democracy in general that President Bharrat Jagdeo needs to know. Here are the words of Mr. Jagdeo speaking at a press conference in Trinidad during the Summit of the Americas; “In our Constitution (Guyana), we can only hold someone for three days without charging him or her. The US has held people for six years; the biggest bastion of democracy, without access to even a lawyer…yet we held the U.S. as the bastion of democracy.”
Mr. Jagdeo is right. The US has done that. But there is a fantastic, yes, fantastic side to the US that Guyana ought to emulate. This is the understanding of the fundamentals of democracy that Mr. Jagdeo needs to come to grips with.
Under the Bush Presidency, the U.S. violated many aspects of the rule of law. But the concretized, embedded democratic institutions of the US were strong enough to counteract the authoritarian tendencies of the Bush Administration. There are no such institutions in Guyana; this has been the case since self-rule in the fifties.
We start with the Freedom of Information Act (FIA). That law allowed the American Civil Liberties Union to file for the supply of four governmental memoranda on the issue of torture. They got it. The American public now knows who the senior Bush officials were who ordered torture, and in so doing violated US laws and the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners. The American public knows that one such person has since been appointed a federal judge.
That will never happen under the present Government of Guyana. There is an army report on torture and the names of even the junior ranks have been withheld. Could President Bush announce that he has seen a videotape of terrorists operating on American soil but he will not release it to the Justice Department?
Once an American President had made that disclosure, he would have faced an FIA request though one suspects sensitive security details would have been removed.
Elder statesman, Eusi Kwayana has called upon Mr. Jagdeo to provide his Buxton tape to the DPP. Under the American system, the Senate Sub-Committee on Terrorism would have demanded that tape, and they would have gotten it. Bush would have been confronted with a subpoena request from a multitude of Congressional Committees. Mr. Jagdeo refuses to share his video footage with even the relevant Parliamentary Committee.
Let’s offer another example of democracy in the US that is superior to Guyana’s. One of President Bush’s top aides broke the identity of a CIA operative because her diplomat/husband said that President Bush didn’t have evidence to back his claim that Saddam Hussein bought enriched uranium from Niger.
To get back at him, the Vice-President’s Chief of Staff, Lewis “scooter” Libby, who simultaneously was an Assistant to President Bush, revealed the name of the woman, Valerie Plame to his media contact.
A special prosecutor was appointed. Libby was charged and jailed for 30 months for lying to a grand jury. We do not have to list the examples of heinous, immoral, criminal behaviour on the part of so many government officials who are immune from even a police interview.
On to this day, Home Affairs Minister, Mr. Clement Rohee chooses not to tell Guyanese why his American visa was with withheld. Up to this day, the people of this country do not know who was/were the investor(s) that was/were planning to build a 14-level hotel complex on the Kingston seawall.
Try getting Mr. Jagdeo to tell us the names. Try getting any kind of information about any act of Government that the Government itself does not want you to have.
Mrs. Jagan used up much of her columns in the weekly Mirror fulminating against the US but she never understood the strengths and weaknesses of American democracy. She carped on the negatives only. President Jagdeo with increasing frequency lashes out at American intransigence.
But he overlooks what is extremely admirable in the functioning of American democracy. In most instances, Mrs. Jagan was right and so is Mr. Jagdeo. But why criticize a system when you do nothing to match its positive qualities that you should. The question that automatically comes up is “Do leaders have the moral authority to question American flaws when their own exercise of power is incomparably egregious?”
One hopes that here in Guyana, our leaders when they rightfully denounce those parts of the American system that undemocratic, they strive to emulate those institutions in the American social structure where democracy is worthy of being copied.  Guyana only could be better if our leaders begin to do so right now.

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