Shouldn’t Mr. Jagdeo step into the ring now?

Jul 28, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

When a President or Prime Minister wants to be the “Maximum Hero,” “All-Powerful Leader,” the “Divine Soul” of his/her nation, he/she must not only be endowed with the qualities of leadership but must be saturated with political finesse, intellectual acumen and be a master strategist. In the Caribbean, Forbes Burnham of Guyana, Eric Williams of Trinidad, Errol Barrow of Barbados, Vere Bird Sr. of Antigua, Michael Manley of Jamaica are names to fit that bill. These were men who were self-assured and not afraid of their detractors.
I certainly do not think that Cheddi Jagan had leadership qualities but it would be shamelessly dishonest to say that Jagan was not a fearless person. Jagan would have gone into the halls of Oxford University and debated the most formidable intellectuals. He would have faltered but that prospect would not have deterred him.
I say in all sincerity that modern times have not seen a leader like Mr. Jagdeo that is so unmoved about the prospect of engaging himself in the arena of debate. He was deterred in the past but should he continue to be so now? He has pioneered himself as someone who has been internationally recognized for his work on the environment. The Government of Guyana emblazoned the street corners with huge billboards that endowed Mr. Jagdeo with the qualities of a champion. Well, isn’t it time the champion steps into the ring?
I doubt he will. This writer’s postulation is that Mr. Jagdeo will accept a third term nomination. Whether the PPP and the important stakeholders in the society will accept this constitutional engineering is left to be seen. But if by some phenomenal stroke of magic, Mr. Jagdeo is the official PPP point man for the forthcoming elections, he will enter the race without a debate. There cannot be even a shadow of a doubt that it is the one trepidation in Mr. Jagdeo’s life. After ten years in power and the proclamation of his political genius by his sycophantic subordinates in the PPP and the state itself, Mr. Jagdeo avoids the debating arena like the plague.
This avoidance is an enigmatic motif in the politics of Mr. Jagdeo that has one of three explanations. Depending on your acceptance of the third line of reasoning then it is not mysterious at all. The first motive could be that he feels he does not have to prove anything to anyone so why go through the routine of a debate with his powerful critics and intellectual detractors and the opposition leaders. This argument can hardly hold water when it was Mr. Jagdeo himself that challenged Robert Corbin to a polemical exchange before the last election. But he put a condition on to it that made him look bad in the eyes of the nation. He confined the exchange to economics only and Mr. Corbin would have none of that.
The second postulate is that because he feels he hasn’t got a strong intellectual sanctuary, he will be prejudged by the nation in that people will start with the bias that his debaters are more talented. In the West Indies, political leadership is a fertile bed where intellectuals spring up like mangoes. Examining the record, Mr. Jagdeo must be the only Caribbean leader that didn’t graduate from a Western university whose credentials are universally recognized. I may be wrong but even in small islands like St. Lucia, Dominica, St. Vincent and Grenada, their PMs graduated from western universities.
The third line of reasoning which I believe has extensive plausibility and removes any notion of the enigmatic in Mr. Jagdeo is that the President is deeply aware that with a live audience he will face ignominy and infamy when his balance sheet is read out by his opponents on the podium. It is possible he will cite the Berbice branch of UG and the Berbice Bridge, but these two meager achievements will not provide space for survival. Heaven help him if during the engagement the bridge is under repairs as it was six weeks ago. Then only the little campus at UG with a few hundred students will be his umbrella to shelter from the storm.
There isn’t going to be a debate at anytime between President Jagdeo and his intellectual and political critics. I doubt he will be the next president of Guyana so we will have to wait until he writes his autobiography to know why he was so scared to death whenever he heard the word “debate.”

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Shouldn’t Mr. Jagdeo step into the ring now?

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