The government’s actions after Jagdeo’s luggage searches may have pushed Delta to leave Guyana

Feb 24, 2013 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Several media sources have reported that former President Jagdeo was searched by Delta on two occasions late last year and that Jagdeo was upset over the treatment. The media has speculated that this was a major factor behind Delta pulling out of Guyana.
No one knows what factors prompted Delta’s pullout. Delta itself said it is financials that prompted its pullout and that is very likely the primary reason for its pullout, given the PPP’s decision to grant national carrier status to Caribbean Airlines Limited (CAL) which enjoys fuel subsidies and given Delta’s recent acquisitions, may have triggered a refocus on other routes.
However, these financial exigencies are countered by other financials that pulled Delta to remain in Guyana. Its passenger load rating was high, it had a strong presence in a dwindling market with only a single major competitor in CAL (which many Guyanese will not use) and the recent merger of US Airways and American Airlines to form the world’s biggest airline, has just impacted Delta’s bottom-line.
In such an environment, there were more factors favouring a wavering Delta’s continued presence in Guyana than those favouring its departure. One has to seriously consider whether the illogical actions of the PPP government in response to the Jagdeo incidents pushed a wavering Delta out of Guyana. Frankly, the PPP government’s actions in creating a diplomatic furore over Jagdeo’s luggage searches were improper, excessive, reckless, economically short-sighted and lacking cost-benefit analysis.
Some may blame Bharrat Jagdeo, the ordinary citizen and former president without any special diplomatic or other immunity, for filing a complaint with his government over a matter that really was standard airport and airline security procedure and practice. I don’t. Any citizen is entitled to report what he or she feels is an affront on their dignity.
It is the government that decides whether that complaint has any merit or is worth pursuing and the manner in which it should be pursued. What I blame is this myopic PPP government that created an international diplomatic incident over the Jagdeo luggage searches against an airline that was wavering about whether it would stay or leave Guyana. This stupid action was inconsistent with the PPP’s push to bring more airlines to Guyana, since it simply solidified one carrier’s decision to leave.
As a former President, Bharrat Jagdeo is nothing more than a regular citizen who used to be President of Guyana. As far as I know, neither international nor aviation law grants any special immunity to an individual who is really and truly a regular citizen to avoid or circumvent the laws relating to airport security and searches.
Every day millions of passengers get searched, scanned and their luggage probed by airport officials. Guyanese airport and airline officials do the same at home. The standard is applied across the board. As a country that is a drug trafficking safe haven, luggage is routinely scanned, searched and examined in Guyana before it leaves. Because airlines can be charged by foreign countries for drugs found on their planes, they have a duty to ensure they do not break the law.
Jagdeo’s administration implemented some of these very stringent search measures at our airports.
So, for the PPP government to foolishly, egregiously and densely launch a diplomatic protest with the US Government through its State Department and Embassy is just staggering idiocy for several reasons.
One, as a regular citizen and regular traveller, Jagdeo is no longer entitled to any special or preferential treatment by airport or airline officials with respect to a search of his person or his luggage. Obviously, Jagdeo went through the airport scanners on both of these incidents but there is no evidence he complained about this search and screening process as he did with the search of his luggage.
As a regular citizen subject to the laws of the land, Jagdeo is no different from the millions of travellers worldwide and the hundreds of Guyanese flying to and from Guyana who are subject to these searches of their person and their luggage. It is improper and a terrible waste of resources for any government to launch a diplomatic protest over an airport or airline official doing fundamental aspects of their job by searching the luggage of a traveller.
If this is a protestable matter, then the PPP government should issue protests for every single Guyanese who is subject to such a search of his/her luggage and feels slighted by the process. This is the absurdity of the PPP government here. That absurdity apparently caused the US State Department to question Delta over the matter. Now, Delta is gone and the PPP is kissing the derrière of Suriname Airlines to try to fill the Delta void.
Donald Ramotar’s lack of backbone is again demonstrated with this matter by failing to tell the former president that he should have privately reported his concerns to the airline, but the Guyana government cannot create a diplomatic issue out of it, not when that issue could cause a wavering Delta to leave and in doing so, kill many Guyanese jobs – and when it will affect tourism and revenues from tourism.
The PPP government should not have allowed this affair to take flight. Donald Ramotar should have stopped being his supine self and insisted Jagdeo’s complaint did not rightly warrant an international incident. I blame the PPP government for its actions which likely has accelerated Delta’s departure.
In its rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth senselessness to defend a single man in an international diplomatic frenzy, the PPP left many penniless and unemployed in a country where the same PPP has the filthy gall to defend foreign labour taking jobs away from the Guyanese people.
M. Maxwell

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