The obsessive traveling of President Jagdeo

Feb 04, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

It may be too strong a statement to make; that Mr. Jagdeo has a fetish about visiting foreign countries. But surely, it cannot be denied that for a country that hardly makes ripples on the world stage, Mr. Jagdeo is one of the world’s most extensive traveling rulers (comparatively speaking, of course).
It has reached the point where this is extremely embarrassing to the ruling party, the Government and to the nation as a whole.
Nothing is wrong if Mr. Jagdeo brings in the goods on these countless foreign itineraries but he doesn’t. Mr. Jagdeo cannot show the Guyanese people what he got from Qatar, Greece and other visits. A frenetic chase around the world over LCDS brought absolutely nothing.
As I write this, the implications on the mendicancy that the Jamaican PM insinuated against Mr. Jagdeo are about to dawn on us. The Government is in a confrontation with the miners over the Norway deal. This is a covenant that another administration will have to re-negotiate. All the fuss about six month’s notification for miners is bound up with the stipulations that the Norway memorandum carries.
Any nationalist leader in the Third World knows that even the great Barack Obama did not come good at Copenhagen last year. Whether Mr. Obama was reluctant or was pressured by Capitol Hill, the US did not concede substantial reduction of green house emissions to the world community, neither did any big power.
The main stumbling block was China. The big countries in the Third World do not trust the Europeans and the US on climate change. They feel that the industrialized West wants the Third World to save the world’s environment. The Norway agreement has now been stripped bare by Guyanese experts, foremost, Dr. Janet Bulkan and economist Clive Thomas. They point out that Norway is no saviour of the climate of Planet Earth.
In fact, President Jagdeo should address the nation (he will never debate Dr. Bulkan) on what is the direct action of Norway itself in Europe to save the ecology of the world.
Let’s get back to the fetish of presidential traveling. Last week, there was a Caricom youth forum in Suriname. Only two Heads paid a visit to the confabulation, Mr. Jagdeo of course and the Prime Minister of St. Kitts. You cannot count the Surinamese President because he was the host and didn’t have to spend money on air flight to attend.
The youth delegates were annoyed that only three Caricom Heads were in attendance and showed their frustration. But what the youths at that forum need to know is that running a poor country is serious business. Only in the Guyana Government is that perspective ignored.
Mr. Jagdeo can easily be nicknamed, Ricky Jagdeo after the famous pop singer in the fifties, Ricky Nelson, that made a big hit with a song, “”I’m a traveling man.”
From Suriname, Mr. Jagdeo left for Russia and to do what? To join in the celebration of fifty years of the existence of Patrice Lumumba University. As an aside – Mr. Jagdeo has to have chalked up a huge sum in per diem with those extensive visits.
Can the Opposition ask the Auditor-General, how much in per diem has Mr. Jagdeo personally earned over the past three years on his incessant flights. The AFC put the cost to the Treasury over the past two and half years as nearing $1B. No one so far has analysed the political dimensions of these relentless foreign trips.
Most commentary seems to focus on the impropriety of such long absence from New Garden Street.
So what are these dimensions? First, it shows the style of Mr. Jagdeo’s leadership. Most definitely, it is an authoritarian one. Mr. Jagdeo has to know that over 90 percent of the population of this country, do not support such an extensive foreign itinerary. But he reacts without concern.
At one time, in the early eighties, President Forbes Burnham called an emergency meeting of the PNC to discuss the ban on flour. All present at that meeting spoke without fear. This brings us to the second aspect.
What is the PPP’s position on this obsessive travel agenda? Is there no way, the PPP as a ruling party, can get Mr. Jagdeo to the table at Freedom House and say to him: “Look there are things you do that do not have the support of the country, jeopardizes the electoral chances of the party and play into the hands of the Opposition”? If they can’t then the PPP has to admit, Guyana is an elected dictatorship.

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The obsessive traveling of President Jagdeo

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