Ten years of Jagdeo: Faustian journey

Aug 13, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Guyana is a difficult country to administer because it is a complex society. I chose the word “society” over “polity” because the former concept takes in a range that is much wider than “polity.” Guyana is not an easy place to understand. Culture, class, race, and social values meet in a tempestuously dangerous confluence.
I would definitely put Guyana as the most onerous country to study and most of all, the Caribbean state that is highly complicated than all its neighbours.
There can be no question about it; the Guyanese Head of Government has to be intellectually endowed. The Guyanese leader must possess leadership qualities and have a profound grasp of intellectual narratives. Mr. Burnham stands out. If Burnham was not flawed through the intoxication of power, he would have ended up as a fantastic success in modern politics.
Cheddi Jagan was a very poor fighter in the lightweight category but Jagan’s unending experience on the Guyana landscape provided him with sociological insights that were necessary in coming to grips with the realities of Guyana. Jagan, if he had ruled Guyana for fifty years and the TUC has become his implacable enemy, he would not have taken away the Critchlow College subsidy. He understood power had its limitations.
Desmond Hoyte was your typical middle class politician who, with his background in law, enabled him to judge the Guyanese society with fairly accurate lenses. Mrs. Jagan, though not a university-trained mind, had a deep awareness of the troubled nature of Guyana and would not have become a confrontationist as Mr. Jagdeo is.
Of all the Presidents, Mr. Jagdeo is the least politically smart. Mr. Jagdeo does not understand this country. His cartography is extremely simplistic. It is the absence of intellectual astuteness that lies at the heart of his never-ending failures. Mr. Jagdeo studies Burnham, and he plays his games emulating Burnham. But Burnham was intellectually gifted. He was a competent chess player. Ninety percent of the mistakes Mr. Jagdeo has made, Mr. Burnham would have carefully avoided.
What Guyana has at the moment is President Burnham without Burnham’s brains; the result is a recipe for disaster. Mr. Burnham was brutal and cunning; so is Jagdeo, but Burnham had finessed methodologies at his disposal. Mr. Jagdeo is yet to comprehend what finesse means. Mr. Burnham must be laughing in his grave to see what a mediocre performance Jagdeo is giving in his emulation attempts.
What Bharrat Jagdeo is yet to learn about the possession of power is that you can maximize it to your own peril or you can maximize it without it being noticed by the population. Mr. Jagdeo is in a supersonic rush to maximize power without any effort at sophistication.
Burnham was the personification of the sophisticated use of power. The reason is because Burnham had intellectual skills at his disposal.
Burnham would never have tolerated a Kwame McCoy as his spokesperson. Burnham would have consigned Mc Coy to a platoon in the National Service on Monkey Mountain.
Burnham’s press spokesperson had to be suave and accomplished as a concert pianist. Burnham would never have tossed aside the advice of his inner circle and appoint the same person on three consecutive occasions to the same post. One can imagine Burnham saying to him, “Comrade, no one is indispensable.” Burnham, with cynical amusement on his visage, would have told his high official who signed more than fifty bogus duty free letters. “Comrade, make yuh choice; home or jail.”
But for sure, Burnham was not putting him back on the job.
The reason for all of this is not because Burnham was a moralist or a watchdog on how the public reacted or a note-taker on what his critics said of him. His calculations were simple and based on intellectual reasoning, pragmatic instincts, and leadership qualities. Why should I keep a man who isn’t doing a good job for me and whose retention may weaken my power base when I could appear to be democratic, and I shut the critics’ mouth by re-assigning him?
You call this practical politics. I have never seen an example of practical politics by Mr. Jagdeo (as distinct from Machiavellian politics – the Roger Khan saga was not sensible or practical politics).  Perhaps the gigantic difference between Mr. Burnham and Bharrat Jagdeo is that Burnham, armed with self-confidence would have gone to the cricket ground and debate his opponents in front of even the foreign players.
Mr. Jagdeo is extremely terrified of the mere idea of squaring off against his critics on live television much less a town hall face-off.  After ten years in power, Mr. Jagdeo remains a failed President

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