Kissoon’s arguments rife with assumptions

Jan 24, 2014 Letters

Dear Editor,
I did not see the programme on the National CommunicationsNetwork (NCN) to which Mr. Frederick Kissoon (“Guyana had sovereignty under President Burnham:” KN: 12/01/2014) referred so I am in no position to say definitively how it was presented.
However, in the interest of brevity, stripped to bare bones and given in his own words, it is not difficult to see the major problem Mr. Kissoon encountered as a result of the manner in which my discourse with the interviewer was presented or created. “When asked if it is not a contradiction that Dr. Roger Luncheon is invoking the sovereignty of Guyana in rejecting the continuation of the democracy project by the US, but the PPP went and solicited the help of the US during the government of the PNC, Dr. Jeffrey said the two things are different…He said back then, Guyana was an authoritarian system and did not have free elections… He went on to add that he is uneasy with the US insistence of continuing the democracy arrangement in a sovereign state where the government has rejected the programme… In other words, if you have to analyze what Jeffrey meant it goes like this – under Burnham, Guyana didn’t have sovereignty.”
The above is rife with assumptions, questionable connections and conclusions, which may or may not have resulted from the manner in which the programme was finally presented. However, the seminal difficulty is the making of a direct connection between my statement with regard to Burnham’s authoritarianism and my current uneasiness about the US continuing with the democratic project in the face of government objections. So, as requested by Mr. Kissoon, let me state my position.
The concept of state sovereignty has been around for over 300 years and has never been absolute in a de jure or de facto manner. Confronted by autocratic regimes, particularly in the developing countries, opposition forces have continually requested various forms of help, particularly, from the more developed countries.
I believe that factors underlying the request for external help from those who wanted to be rid of the Burnham regime were much more substantive than the reasons given for similar types of request today.
Putting aside the contention that Burnham’s approach was perhaps preventing a greater (communist) harm, he was undoubtedly also avoiding regime change by subverting the very democratic process he had sworn to uphold. The results of the 2011 elections suggest that such is not the case today!
That said, if the Americans had proposed a relevant type of direct intervention under the PNC and the regime had asked them to withdraw, I suspect that I would not simply have been “uneasy” but much more vociferous in my contention that they should withdraw.
Quite apart from my support for the PNC, the appeal to sovereignty carried much more currency in that period and I believe that direct intervention in the internal affairs of a state over the objection of the host government should not be encouraged. Indeed, Article 41:1 of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations states of diplomatic representatives: “They have a duty not to interfere in the internal affairs of that state.”
Dealing with the PPP/C government is the task of the Guyanese people aided by what internal and external support it could muster and I stated in the interview that I supported the US democratic project. However, unless the regime becomes unusually brutal (based, perhaps, on some minimal contemporary world standards), direct foreign intervention of any sort should be avoided.
Finally, Mr. Kissoon, I suggest that, in terms of public comment, we should not place too much faith in academic and intellectual credibility. As Thomas Sowell, (2011- “Intellectual and Society:” Basic Books) observed: “The list of top-ranked intellectuals who made utterly irresponsible statements, and who advocate hopelessly unrealistic and recklessly dangerously things could be extended almost indefinitely!”
We should pay much more attention to getting to know and telling the truth.
Henry B Jeffrey

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Kissoon’s arguments rife with assumptions

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