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THE PRESIDENT AND HIS AWARD

Feb 18, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

No one should begrudge someone who has been awarded an honorary doctorate. The third degree is a third degree, and persons who have been awarded an honorary degree for their achievements in life, deserve recognition just as much as those who have earned it in the classroom.
Knowledge and the honours which such knowledge confers are gifts to be used in helping mankind, not be flaunted like a “presser foot”. In the same way, we must always be proud of those who through their efforts have been rewarded by universities for their achievements.
We should never begrudge anyone the recognition that they have earned in the eyes of others, even if we do not respect the title conferred or the deservedness of the honorees.
Life is too short to be spent raging at others because of envy or jealously. Life is too precious to be spent churning out ill-will against those whom we dislike.
We will end up wounding ourselves with the very lances with which we hope to injure the reputation of others.
There are obviously persons who do not like our President and would therefore like to belittle his accomplishments. We should not try to put our President or the schools he went to down. Patrice Lumumba University is not a college. And it is not a Stalinist school of indoctrination. A great deal of Cold War hysteria had tended to view the training received in the Soviet Union as being ideological in nature and done through schools and universities that are fronts for ideological brainwashing. This is far from the truth.
So we should not try to belittle the schools of the former Soviet Union and the graduates they produced, no more than we should write off doctors simply because they were trained in Cuba. We must give everyone his due.
The President deserves his. He has done well for himself. The man has a lucky charm. Even his friends are doing well.
He has also been honoured by the West in a far more exceptional way than the Russians have honoured him. The President had the distinction a few years ago of chairing both the World Bank and the International Fund. He is therefore highly regarded in the West.
As Guyanese, we must all be proud that someone who came from such humble origins could have achieved so much in so little time, despite the fact that in doing so he may have done things that everyone may not agree with.
Those achievements, including becoming the President of Guyana, has bought tremendous pride to his university and they have seen it fit to award him with an honorary doctorate.
They are proud of one of their alumnus and they have decided to give him an award. Universities all over the world, including the University of the West Indies do the same.
Not so long ago two outstanding Guyanese, Yesu Persaud and Ian Mc Donald, received honorary doctorates in recognition of their work.
While we must not begrudge those that are so recognized, we must equally not become over-zealous and make these awards out to be more than what they are.
It is expected that there may be persons who may wish to extend congratulations to the President, and there may be others who may wish to make such congratulations public. But it would certainly be taking it a bit too far if our newspapers are swamped with congratulatory messages, thereby lifting the recognition to a level that over exaggerates its importance.
President Jagdeo’s honorary doctorate is not an exceptional award. There are other leaders and outstanding personalities who have been similarly recognized.
As such there is no need for anyone to go overboard in making the award out to be more than what it is. There are even some folks who are talking about the need for a public holiday to celebrate this award.
The President should therefore come out and thank all those who have congratulated him and he should ask that the advertisements of congratulations be used for some charitable purpose such as donating to the Haitian Fund.
We should also keep the celebrations muted. The fireworks and the bacchanal… and the holiday will be more deserving when the Nobel Prize awards are announced.

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