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Demitting office without a hint of humility 

Dec 03, 2011 Letters

 

 

Dear Editor,
Once again, it was left to the sometimes lone, rapid response critic Frederick Kissoon, and later David Hinds on Channels 9 and 6, to respond to another egregious display of arrogance from the outgoing President of the Republic at his press conference on Wednesday.
Many looked with dismay as without a hint of the humility befitting one demitting office, he plunged into wild and unsubstantiated attacks on the opposition parties and citizens. In his rage he said the state and police would be taking notes of texts, tapping phones, monitoring the social media for opposition dissent or attempts at civil unrest.
This arrogance flies in the face of the fact, as recorded by EAB, the press and opposition forces, that the only people doing the attacking on Election Day were people from his own party and government.
There was not a single incident where the opposition disrupted the conduct of the elections. In fact, according to the logic of his (Jagdeo’s) own recorded disgust with GECOM, the citizens had every right to be concerned with the conduct of the poll.
Perhaps the only thing that exceeded the outgoing President’s haughtiness at the press conference was the tameness of the assembled press corps in asking tough questions about the dubious content of most of his assertions.
While the elections are over, the significance of that behaviour must not be dismissed lightly. It is a test and template of how far the country can move away from Presidential and governmental arrogance that comes with full control of past parliaments by one political party and the concurrent complacency of foes, whether in the media or opposition.
It was not a surprise that in the same week that Jagdeo prepared to leave office the Commonwealth observers noted the unfair advantage of the governing party over the media in the elections, and Transparency International reported that Guyana had achieved parity with the “highly corrupt” profile.
Nigel Westmaas

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