Wik-ed Bias

Sep 07, 2011 Editorial

The WikiLeaks fallout continues to bemuse the public. This is not surprising since the average man/woman in the street is habituated to think of conversations between their most august citizens and members of the diplomatic corps as rarefied occurrences. To discover that they are mostly gossip, innuendos and speculation on those in power – and then for the hearsay sometimes twice removed to be given an American slant – surely has to be a letdown.
If we follow Alice Roosevelt’s dictum that great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events and small minds discuss people, we surely have a surfeit of small-mindedness in Guyana. But what was most disheartening was not the tone (supercilious) and slant (US,US and US first) of the US officials, nor the penchant of some of our politicians to scurry over to the US Embassy and curry-favour, but the reaction of those in government to the substantive revelations on matters affecting Guyanese interests.
With the government acknowledging, for instance, that drug trafficking represents a major threat to the survival of the Guyanese state, surely the conflicting facts revealed on why the US has not established a DEA office in our country should have been clarified. Has the US agreed to the establishment of such an office? Have we placed any conditions on such a presence that the Americans find insurmountable? Was an alleged threat to blow up any such office the insuperable hindrance?
Not only inquiring minds, but all Guyanese would want to know. And there are so many other issues that have been raised.
And what has been the reaction of the government? The President, himself, first asserted that the WikiLeaks cables were not credible, and so were not to be taken seriously. Fair enough at one level. But as soon as the substantive issues started to be given exposure by the media, such as ours, a radically different tack was taken. We analysed, for instance, the import of the reports of the President initially signalling that he would not have the present Commissioner succeed his predecessor. The ABCE representatives had evidently objected to the appointment on the grounds that the individual had links to drug lords operating in this country.
Now this is not an insignificant charge: it goes to the very heart of whether our country stands even a chance of confronting the drug menace. Essentially, there can be no anti-drug fight if the Top Cop is compromised. So what did the president do? He suggested that if the US were to revoke the visa of the individual, that would give him leverage to not make the appointment. But when the US complied (suggesting that it had hard evidence since it would not have made such a move capriciously) the President blithely went ahead with the appointment. To all observers on the outside, it would appear that all the President wanted was leverage to control the Commissioner, and the devil take the country’s drug problem – which is precisely what has happened since then.
But the President has ignored these issues of national import and has utilised the media under his control to attack the messengers. To have them trumpet, for instance, that the Managing Director/Publisher of this newspaper has had conversations with individuals at the US Embassy, does not address the fundamental problems exposed as being neglected by the administration.
To trumpet the US officials’ assessment that this individual has his fingers “on the pulse of the underworld” simply means that he is a hands-on owner who understands the mentality of those that are challenging the stability of the state. The President would do himself well to find out to why with the various intelligence agencies at his beck and call – in addition to the ostentatiously named new CIA – he does not have his fingers on such a pulse.
Is this not why he had to run crying to the ABCE embassies – with “furrowed brow” – for help when his government was under attack by that underworld? So to which rock will he run when the fire comes next time?

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