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Booked!

Sep 23, 2012 Editorial

In modern democracies, the role of the spokesperson for the Executive to the media has become institutionalised. It is a mechanism that serves the public interest in the right of the citizenry to be informed about the actions of government even as it simultaneously serves the interest of the Executive to publicise its activities to the citizens. In Guyana, this role has been filled by the Secretary to the Cabinet, Dr Roger Luncheon since 1992.
After his response to questions about the award of contracts for the supply of textbooks to the Ministry of Education, it is our position that Dr Luncheon must be removed from his position forthwith for the embarrassment he has brought upon the President, the government and the people of Guyana. It had long been alleged that the government had been engaged in purchasing ‘pirated’ textbooks but this had been strenuously denied.
This year, it was noticed that the bid documents from the Ministry demanded that “the covers must be in full colour and the text must closely resemble the original text.” It was Dr Luncheon’s riposte to questions about this specification that precipitated the present international firestorm.
“We establish the suitability of the service or the goods provided; the quality, and the technical aspect of things. Once we are satisfied with the technical aspect, then we go for the lowest cost…The procurement, whether it is copyright material, has really concentrated on value for money.” In other words, once the books are cheap, to hell with copyright laws!
Such a response from a person who has had to field questions about international law and the international trading system as a whole for years betrays either supreme arrogance or senility, or a combination of both. Whatever it is, it means that Dr Luncheon must go. In the last few decades, the most powerful western countries have placed on the top of their agenda in the WTO and other fora, their demand that intellectual property rights, with copyright laws as a subset, be recognised. With the shift in the world economy, on a value basis, from ‘potato chips to computer chips’ they have insisted that the knowledge embodied in the new products and services be protected from theft.
This is the tide that Dr Luncheon would have Guyana challenge directly and frontally. Even as this is written, the US and China are locked in charges and counter charges that China is engaging in violations of intellectual property rights.
For the longest while, China had played fast and loose on the issue but with its accession to the WTO in 2001, it has been forced to at least challenge that it is violating its international legal commitments. And this is from the second largest economy in the world and one which the developed world depends on to pull them out of their stubborn recession.
So where does Dr Luncheon get off thumbing his nose at the piece of the international trading regime that the developed world consider as their ace in the hole for survival? What does he expect their response towards Guyana to be? We have to be the first country in the world that publicly asserted its refusal to observe intellectual property rights. We are now in any Google search of violators of copyright laws.
But where is the Attorney General in all of this legal fiasco? The Minister of Education, who is a lawyer, spoke of the ‘moral’ aspect of the imbroglio, but we hope that she is not the legal spokesperson for the government.
The British Government, not surprising in light of Dr Luncheon’s bold asseveration that affected several British publishers, has forced President Donald Ramotar to concede that the government will work out an ‘amicable’ solution. This was always in the offing, for example through licensing arrangements with publishers, and the AG should have so advised Cabinet.
Yet Dr Luncheon continues to challenge the publishers to use the ‘special facilities’ – read courts – for relief. Guyana cannot afford such international notoriety.

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