Could those 380 Wikileaks cables bring down the Guyana Government?

Dec 02, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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It has now been established that there are more than 300 US Embassy cables in the Wikileaks cache on Guyana. Some have put it at 380. It should be noted that the complete bundle has not been released.
So Guyanese will have to wait to hear what the Kingston Embassy said about the Guyana leadership.
It is doubtful that the foreign newspapers will carry the items on Guyana because so much is in those releases that an obscure territory like Guyana may not catch the eyes of the editors of Le Monde (France), the Guardian (London) etc
The Guardian has (and will continue to do as more documents are downloaded from Wikileaks) established an interactive guide that allows readers to search the database of the US cables. You punch in your key words and the country of interest comes up. At the moment Guyana is not in the Guardian’s database.
I don’t know why because in an article on Sunday, the Guardian did say there were comments on the Anglophone Caribbean which means that the Guardian is in possession of those documents on CARICOM states.
One route Guyanese can take is to get their British connections to contact the Guardian for the cables on CARICOM nations.
Users can go directly to Wikileaks to search for what they want but as the world knows the server has been down because of cyberspace attacks.
It is only a matter of time before Guyanese see and read what the Kingston diplomats had to say about the Government of Guyana.
Until we gain access to Wikileaks servers, we can only speculate. But from the pattern that has emerged, it appears that the diplomats around the world were interested in informing Washington, D.C. about corruption and drug connections.
The releases showed that the Embassies were interested in understanding the personalities of the world’s top leaders so that the White House could assess who it was dealing with.
In the case of small countries, I doubt that the diplomats sent back personality assessments. My guess is that in relation to Guyana, the transmissions focused mainly on the ruling elites.
My predictions are the following. I believe there have been notes on the Guyana Government’s relationship with drug barons, particularly Roger Khan. Washington may have been informed that Khan had more than just formal connections with key players in the corridors of power.
I also suspect that names that will definitely feature in other cables on Guyana will be “Sash” Sawh, Clement Rohee and the Commissioner of Police.
The latter two have had visa restrictions placed on them and Washington had to be advised on that course of action by Kingston.
The Guyanese people may finally know why Rohee’s visa was withdrawn. I am waiting for this moment because it will release me from a lifelong promise to a former Embassy staffer not to publicly discuss the Rohee visa scandal.
I am betting that submissions to the State Department will also cite the fears and concern of the then Commissioner of Police, Winston Felix, on drug connections in the corridors of power.
Corruption – There will be several notepads on this. Guyana is a thinly populated territory. There are no guarded secrets only public secrets. I have long argued on this page that the closeness between the power-holders and certain multi-billionaires revolves around participation of those political elites in the investments of those billionaires.
I am convinced that the Guyanese people know that politicians have financial inputs in the business ventures of these billionaires. The concessions are too generous, phenomenally generous, to be believed. I doubt there is a citizen out there who believes that the purchase of a certain property recently was a routine business transaction.
The US Embassy knows about unbelievable corruption in Guyana and those cables contain their findings.
Finally, the notes may provide the answers as to why the US Government has not acted against corrupt leaders in Georgetown so far. My analysis centres on quid pro quo. For not prosecuting Ministers and other high level officials, the US perhaps is insisting maybe on two things — the Government’s cooperation in providing information on who are the main narcotics shippers to the US or intelligence gathering by the Guyana Government on Chávez.
One thing is certain. No matter how small, unknown and unimportant Guyana is, the American authorities would have acted before against incredible corruption in Georgetown.
Something is not right. The answer I believe is in that quid pro quo. We await the contents of those e-mails from the US Embassy here to the State Department.

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