President Jagdeo’s style

Nov 07, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I am not going to get personal or get into the gutter with President Jagdeo. There is bound to be tremendous loss of respect by citizens when a President behaves so wildly. Perhaps the only person who doesn’t know that the Office of the President carries with it certain levels of decorum may be the President himself.
At his press conference on Thursday, President Jagdeo lowered himself in the eyes of the world. Given what is taking place around Mr. Jagdeo, one can understand his extensive anxiety, almost near depression.
The Copenhagen dream is over. The UN Senate has postponed debate on climate change and the UK Government now says a climate change consensus will have to wait for another year. Copenhagen may not even take place. The deflation of Mr. Jagdeo is immense.
He put so much credibility into his low carbon wagon that now it has been derailed, anger and frustration are expected. Mr. Jagdeo has to work closely with a media personnel in his office that the US Embassy believes is unfit to travel to the United States. It certainly doesn’t help the image of the presidency.
Mr. Jagdeo’s problems are mounting. Guysuco is set to lose lots of money next year. Blackouts will ease for Christmas and come back with revenge in 2010. The torture episode will bring down many of Mr. Jagdeo’s acolytes. The US Embassy may be going through the names.
Media operatives have information that the political directorate knew about the ants’ nest torture of an alleged drug runner. This entire administration from top to bottom knows that the security forces have been breaking international law by brutally torturing suspects.
The enormity of this concatenation of sordidness will not help Mr. Jagdeo’s third term planners. The fight to stop a third term for Mr. Jagdeo is already penetrating the walls of Freedom House.
It is against this landscape of failures that Mr. Jagdeo descended to very unbecoming levels at his Thursday press conference. There cannot be a citizen who will not feel a sense of shame at how their President behaved at that press meeting. But two dimensions of that event need to be analysed.
When you see that type of semantics flowing from the mouth of a nation’s president then such a system has to produce the likes of Kwame Mc Coy. It has to produce security personnel that have no respect for their Commander-in-Chief. When you are President you have to stand tall, and be very courteous, elegant and urbane in your speeches. It brings admiration and respect.
Unfortunately that is the world of politics Mr. Jagdeo never knew and will never know.
The second dimension is his automatic response in rejecting the one-on-one interview with the Kaieteur News journalist. Several, maybe countless times, as recent as three weeks ago, I emphasised the point that Mr. Jagdeo will never debate his critics or face a live interview with the press.
His turf is and will always be the press conference. That is where his rampart is. He will not venture outside of that fortification. There was a Freudian process that came to the surface immediately after the journalist spoke of a one-on-one format. The defence mixed with anger and cussing down flowed right away.
Something snapped when the question of an open, free-flowing discussion with the journalist was raised.
Mr. Jagdeo lives in mortal fear of a process called the debate. He will never have one. The sins, mistakes, fallibilities, venalities, failures of a decade of rule are too mountainous to risk a debate. The fear factor is active because in such a national scenario, moments of embarrassment can be so devastating that Mr. Jagdeo’s presidency may not survive.
This writer believes that every day Mr. Jagdeo opens his mouth he says things that can be used against him and things for which he cannot and will not be able to defend himself against.
Take the Thursday press conference. Mr. Jagdeo in an insinuation against the columnist Peeping Tom, derided the use of pen name writers to attack the Government.
This is a horrible error to make. Mr. Jagdeo is the Minister of Information, in charge of the Chronicle. For years now the Chronicle features four letters a day written by people with fictitious names that praise the President. Then the Chronicle has three columnists that go under the most comical pen-names.
Is this the man that castigates another newspaper for carrying anonymous writers? The Kwame Mc Coy visa revocation is causing hell-raising consternation in the corridors of power at the moment. We may well see more cussing down from the highest office in the land.

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President Jagdeo’s style

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