Ten years of Jagdeo: A stranger comes knocking

Aug 11, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Today marks the day in 1999, when Mr. Jagdeo much to the surprise of all Guyanese (I take the liberty of saying, all) in and out of this land, became President of the Republic. In 2008, I would have completed twenty years as a commentator in both the print and electronic media.
This is the first time, I didn’t have to take a quiet moment and search my mind for analytical angles on writing about the nature of any Guyanese Head of State.
Burnham was complex. Hoyte was less so but not a straight forward personality to evaluate. Dr. Jagan’s character was extremely simple to analyse but there were dimensions to him that appeared esoteric.
Mrs. Jagan’s conceptualisations of people and life stemmed from 19th century fascist/communist ideological tenets and these traits made her the easiest of leaders to assess.
All of these Guyanese power-holders were situated in historical narratives that made a study of each of them not a simple undertaking.
Mr. Jagdeo is the exception. For the ten years that he has ruled Guyana, I see nothing complex, esoteric, or unusual that entails a detailed research on him.
Mr. Jagdeo is to my mind the most ordinary Head of State the Caribbean has produced. His supporters are going to say that I am not objective because I am a government critic. In the end I have to write the way I see it.
There are dimensions to Mr. Jagdeo’s rule that when the comparative method is used, he emerges as a poor performer when compared to Burnham, Hoyte and the two Jagans.
If you examine Mr. Jagdeo, using that comparative scale, on plains that take in – leadership qualities; competence in handling difficult situations; intellectual keenness; success in policy-making; loyalty of inner circles; public relations finesse; reaching out to vexed constituencies; media acceptance among others, Mr. Jagdeo is a huge failure.
There are two types of leaders –transformational and transactional. The former transforms the horizons he/she inherits. Changes come from the possession of this quality.
A transactional leader is less endowed but not necessarily a mediocre person. In the case of Mr. Jagdeo he is not transactional or transformational.
Many reasons explain Mr. Jagdeo’s continued lack of success in transforming Guyana.
We will look at some of the more salient ones. We can start with his fairy-tale accession to power. When he took over the presidency, Mr. Jagdeo had no political history behind him. Of his batch mates that came back from studies at the Patrice Lumumba University, Mr. Jagdeo lived in obscurity. He worked in the State Planning Secretariat under the Hoyte presidency and was just a quiet civil servant. Even in the PYO circles he did not stand out. His university mate, Rajendra Rampersaud, became the more known of the two.
Jagdeo took a job under Clive Thomas at UG, and was slated to marry the daughter of Moses Nagamootoo.
Jagdeo gained the attention of Dr. Jagan when he became the personal assistant to Minister of Finance Asgar Ally. He was later made Ally’s deputy.
When Ally became a victim of a Shakespearian conspiracy in which Jagan’s incompetence became a party tragedy, Jagdeo played the role of Brutus.
Ally’s demise saw the birth of Jagdeo. In what was largely a Mephistophelian drama of venom, hate, jealousy and deceit, Moses Nagamootoo was decapitated solely out of the narrowness of the human mind, a disease that inheres in the PPP and Mr. Jagdeo was reborn again.
Mrs. Jagan resigned because President Hoyte’s invocation of Macbeth’s witches was too much for her. Hoyte’s bonfire of rage ignited “mo fyaah, slo fyaah” and it took its toll on Mrs. Jagan’s health.
On this day in 1999, she resigned. That decision sank Nagamootoo in the sea where he drowned and Bharrat Jagdeo became the President. It was one of Guyana’s tragic mistakes.
President Jagdeo in 1999 was reduced to a rubber stamp. But that was the role intended for him. He was politically shaped into a messenger by the top league in the PPP leadership. He took orders from all of them. He carried out their mandates faithfully. He enacted policies that came from their minds not his own.
He was annoyed but he had no reason to be because he was given the Presidency by a party and a country he didn’t do anything spectacular for. This was a gift few people in history and the world received. After the 2001 elections, he gradually asserted himself though he was still not his own man. The defining moment in his Presidency came with the crime spree that followed the 2002 Mash Day escape.

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