An open letter to the Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, Nairobi, Kenya

Apr 26, 2010 Letters

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Dear Mr. Steiner,

Felicitations and longevity to you, as you and your esteemed colleagues endeavour to lead the fight for a better global environment.

I write as a Guyanese, who should have been elated at the news that Guyana’s President, Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo, was named one of six persons by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as Champions of the Earth for their fight in preserving the forest and combating climate change.

Instead, I write as a Guyanese who is deeply concerned about the way governments and international institutions continue to recognise, reward and award world leaders whose leadership at home is under serious questioning.

Pardon the reference, but during the Forbes Burnham presidency in Guyana (1964 -1985), Guyana experienced rigged elections, violation of human rights and a certain level of corruption in government that enriched and empowered the ruling party and certain of its leading members, even as the country tanked due to both corruption and ill-advised economic and political policies and practices.

Ironically, despite all of this being known to governments and world bodies, Burnham was welcomed with open arms and allowed to make speeches as if all was well in Guyana. With Mr. Jagdeo now in power, it is like déjà vu all over again, except that government corruption today is excruciatingly blatant and seems to favour mostly members of one particular ethnic background.

I quote for reference, sir, an extract from a press release purportedly from your office on Mr. Jagdeo: “As the President of a country with 40 million acres of untouched rainforest, Mr. Jagdeo has been working on inviting donors and investors to pay for the protection of the forests through the sale of carbon credits, or investments in eco-tourism and pharmaceutical discoveries. With the money he expects to generate from this trade, President Jagdeo plans to improve the country’s coastal infrastructure to protect it from the potential rise in sea levels.”

Well, sir, I have been following Mr. Jagdeo’s galvanized efforts as he globe-trotted to promote climate change awareness, and had I not known better, I, too, would have applauded his efforts and even his UNEP award. But I am painfully aware of Mr. Jagdeo’s very poor and highly questionable leadership performance as head of the Guyana Government, which, itself, is not only steep in corruption but, judging from the past 10 years of his administration’s kid gloves treatment of corruption, there is absolutely no real comprehensive plan or hope for cleaning up before he demits office in 2011.

Let the records show that, contrary to his much vaunted climate change messages and photo-ops with world figures, Mr. Jagdeo’s true motive here that captivated the attention of so many was mainly to convince rich countries to invest millions of dollars (he had set a benchmark of about US$580 million a year based on the findings of some study) towards his artfully contrived Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS). But given the pervasiveness of loose corruption in his government, whatever money he might have received for LCDS may well have ended up into the pockets and purses of the very people whose pockets and purses are now being filled through a series of corrupt practices in government. In fact, many donor nations have raised serious questions about unfettered corruption in governments, including Guyana’s, as a stumbling block to investing money to fight climate change.

And what is deeply disturbing, sir, is that despite the private media highlighting instance after instance of corrupt government practices, including major questions of misappropriation and unaccounted funds in the Auditor-General’s yearly reports, the government either dismisses these as being investigated or excuses them with convoluted explanations. There has been no sincere effort to engage the Guyana Police Force in investigating many of these reports, and when the police do get involved (which is rarely), the investigations last for what seems like an eternity.

In 1999, not long after taking office, Mr. Jagdeo told a gathering of Guyanese residing in Florida, he planned to return home and pass legislation to deal with corruption in government and especially among Customs Officers, which was an admission on his part that the disease existed.

Nine years later (2008), rather than order a criminal investigation, he instituted polygraph testing of Customs Officers, and pledged to extend the testing to other government employees, but not senior government officials. Some of the Customs Officers who failed the test were fired by the President who told the media that he was not satisfied with their explanation why they failed the test.

Sir, in countries where governments submit to the rule of law and respect of people’s rights, that is not the standard approach to dealing with corruption or suspicion of corruption in government, because it does not leave the fired employees with legal legs to stand on if they want to fight their dismissal in a court of law.

So you at least get an idea of what I am getting at about how the Jagdeo Government sees and deals with corruption.

I don’t expect this letter to result in a revocation of the award, and I certainly don’t care if you forward a copy of it to Mr. Jagdeo, but I want you and your colleagues to know that Mr. Jagdeo got an award for his efforts on the climate change fight, whereas the fight was really supposed to result in hundreds of millions of dollars for Guyana’s coffers.

Take away the LCDS factor from the Jagdeo climate change equation and he wouldn’t even be recognised let alone awarded anything. To be brutally blunt, Mr. Jagdeo does not really care about climate change fight, because 1) Guyana’s forests have been largely in tact for thousands of years and there is no comprehensive economic plan or burgeoning population that threatens widespread destruction of trees, and 2) Guyana’s capital, Georgetown, floods easily if there is a heavy downpour of rain, primarily because of poor drainage and irrigation systems, so that the threat of flooding is more likely the result of interfering politics in the city’s management and not the result of low lying coastal lands.

May I expand a bit on that, sir, by saying that Georgetown was once dubbed the Garden City, but is now deemed a garbage city because of garbage and litter all over the place?

And the citizens of the capital city have been complaining while the government has been blaming the Mayor and City Council, but here is the truth: the citizens of Georgetown have not been able to vote for a mayor since 1994 because the government (and the main opposition) agreed to postpone Local Government Elections to facilitate LG reforms. Sixteen years later and no reforms! Sixteen years later and no LG Elections!

That Mr. Jagdeo can be awarded by the UNEP for his efforts at promoting the global climate change fight, while his government contributes to the environmental mess in the nation’s capital by refusing to ensure LG Elections are held in a timely manner means this award has more meaning to Mr. Jagdeo than the people of Guyana.

Even his party’s General Secretary, a likely presidential contender in 2011, opined 16 years late that LG Elections could have been held using the old system until the reforms were ready for implementation, but the people of Guyana have to wait to exercise their franchise while their capital becomes an environmental eye sore while the President is busy traveling, gaining recognitions and getting awards for fighting climate change.

I just wish governments and international bodies would do background checks on how political leaders are faring at home before handing out awards and rewards to them, because some supporters may wrongly and even deliberately misinterpret awards and rewards as a general stamp of approval for what is happening even back at home.

Emile Mervin

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