“But we have to do things in a proper way”

Jun 26, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

These were the words uttered by Norwegian Ambassador to Guyana, Ms. Turid Rodrigues Eusebio. She made this sentence when she met sections of the national media after presenting her credentials to President Jagdeo on June 7. It is remains an intriguing situation that neither the President himself, none of his Ministers, party officials nor even the sycophantic underlings of the Jagdeo administration have chided the Ambassador for that rather blunt assessment.
The context was her elaboration on the LCDS process between Norway and Guyana. Here are some more relevant words from Madam Ambassador. “We are talking big money. I was informed that the contribution from Norway would make up 10 per cent of the budget in Guyana.”
The diplomat after stating that the Norwegian Minister of the Environment wants “to see things on the table and results moving,” went on to say, “But we have to do things in a proper way.”
How does one assess this concern of the Ambassador? How do we contextualize it?
Different analysts can put various interpretations, but my opinion is that the wording was a not-so diplomatic warning to the Guyana Government that if Norway is going to release the money, it would like to see certain guidelines followed. I believe the diplomat was hinting at transparency, accountability and adherence to legal rules. Others may see it in other ways, but this is my assessment. The question to be answered is why would the Norwegians take this route?
It is only the PPP leadership in Guyana that is yet to comprehend the changing reality of the world that the World Wide Web has brought.
Mr. Clement Rohee still suffers from the curiosity of how a Canadian immigration judge could have granted asylum to a Guyanese who made accusations against him, Rohee, without an investigation being done by the Canadians in Guyana.
In a previous column I suggested to Rohee that the judge probably “Googled” Guyana and picked up a lot of unsavoury information on how power is exercised here, including the case of the “torture boy”.
All you have to do to find out if a Minister of Justice in any country is a devil or angel, you “Google” his/her name and read about his/her past and present activities. Here is a perfect example of how the world comes into your home by way of a computer.
I got an email from a doctoral student studying climate change asking me for my opinion on LCDS and climate change and other related topics. I didn’t know who this student was. She offered no details on her background when she lived in Guyana.
I went to Google and found out that she was one of the chief propagandists for the Government of Guyana. I even got information on who offered her the scholarship (from the Government of Guyana). This is a woman very close to the ruling regime.
One has to be stupid to think that the Norwegians are not reading up on Guyana.
They read the independent dailies. Last year (it could be this year, I can’t remember), I got a telephone call from the World Bank representative asking me to have lunch with him. Commonsense can tell anyone (assuming the PPP leaders have it) that he knew about me from reading my columns and probably wanted to hear my views on my country.
What President Jagdeo and the rest of the Government must be made to understand is that the Norwegians, for the purpose of giving that money (which the Ambassador thinks is very large by Guyana standards), have done some research on Guyana. And what they learned may not be encouraging.
What makes Mr. Jagdeo think that the Ambassador did not “Google” Guyana last week while at home looking through some papers on LCDS? And what would she have found? That the President may suspend a popular television station that provides coverage for the opposition; that GECOM wants the return of the media monitoring unit for the upcoming election, a body which was taken away by the Office of the President.
She may have asked herself why would any democratic government want to do that?
I wrote three times before that I do not believe that LCDS money will be dispensed to Guyana once the Jagdeo regime is in power. I am repeating it again. It is my deeply felt opinion that the main Norwegian actors in the LCDS programme have serious reservations about the democratic credentials of the Jagdeo government and will not release those funds until he leaves power.
That statement by the Ambassador says it all.

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“But we have to do things in a proper way”

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