The post-Jagdeo presidency

May 28, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

When a president goes through a concatenation of mistakes, a creeping disrespect for his political character emerges among the citizens. People feel that he is incompetent or is a shallow thinker, or is a poor strategist.
A leader can confront such declining fortunes in many ways. He/she can strive to excel, surround his/her office with a bunch of smart subordinates, or mask his/her mediocrity by the display of hauteur and hubris.
In the case of Bharrat Jagdeo, he reacted to his adverse situation by falling victim to authoritarian power. He took the road of hauteur and hubris. Jagdeo felt hurt by widespread rumour in and out of Guyana about a certain dimension of his psychology. As a reaction to the crescendo of tall stories about his life, Jagdeo decided to show Guyana that he could be a big and bad guy.
As an ocean of mistakes drowned Jagdeo, particularly the egregious marriage episode with Ms. Varshnie Singh, Mr. Jagdeo took refuge in dictatorship politics. But along the way, the disrespect for his presidency grew and became extensive throughout the land. I honestly believe that Mr. Jagdeo received the least respect from his fellow citizens than any other governmental head in the history of the British West Indies.
Public servants, security officials, the business community and other sectors of the Guyanese society had to obey Mr. Jagdeo and bowed to his wishes but the respect was never there. I know a very prominent businessman, top senior police officer, a very high rank in the army and a well known UG lecturer who were close to Mr. Jagdeo but admitted to me that he was not an impressive politician.
You could have come to hate Burnham or Hoyte or Jagan but the respect for them was enduring.
Unfortunately, Mr. Ramotar’s performance is as mediocre or even worse that Mr. Jagdeo’s and the disrespect for Mr. Ramotar as the President of Guyana is growing. Mr. Ramotar consistently puts his foot in his mouth and he is definitely looking inelegant (I chose a safe word rather than a harsh adjective which is more appropriate).
From day one, he began to do things that engendered a lack of admiration for him and it goes on inexorably. This is what I mean by the concatenation of mistakes.
Soon after the 2011 elections, he opened his mouth and said something awful. He accused the opposition of literally shaping the election results in their favour with the charge that in Georgetown, a substantial size of PPP voters were physically prevented from voting. So they rigged yet lost the presidency?
If, the observers didn’t see that, then it can be assumed that they did not see PPP personnel rigging the elections in the countryside. The truth is nothing like what Ramotar implied happened.
If you wanted to respect Mr. Ramotar, his Cabinet choices brought an immediate snob from the citizenry. Mr. Ramotar didn’t bring in even half of a new face much less a quota of his own selections. He stuck with the Jagdeo Cabinet. Space would not allow for an enumeration of his mountains of mistakes but he will offer one more example before we touch on his performance last week.
He told judges that they would give judgement against the State because they want to appear to be independent in the eyes of the nation. This was a boulder thrown at the judiciary. The judges probably chose not to respond because they might have thought that it wasn’t worth the energy given the constant nonsense that comes from Mr. Ramotar.
Last week was bad for Ramotar. First, Mr. Ramotar said he couldn’t address his mind to the letter written to him by the Caribbean Financial Task Force (on money laundering) because he received it right in the middle of efforts to woo the opposition parties into budget talks. This is extremely foolish.
Why ask the opposition to talk about the Budget when you have already tabled it in Parliament and what were you doing the whole year since the last budget presentation? And why as president you have to be so preoccupied with that so there is no time left for other matters of State?
Last Wednesday, Mr. Ramotar wrote a letter to the National Assembly imploring the opposition parties to pass the amendments to the anti- money laundering Bill and not one word about concession, compromise or inclusiveness. Mr. Ramotar was telling the opposition that he cannot give anything but nevertheless he would expect to be given things in return.
In his Independence speech, he put his foot in his mouth again by saying the identical thing. Ramotar is a clumsy version of Jagdeo.

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The post-Jagdeo presidency

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