Latest update June 4th, 2026 12:30 AM
Who won: The US Ambassador or the PPP cabal?
When the Government revoked the work permit of the administrator of the US-financed LEAD project, Mr. Glenn Bradbury, there were people inside the PPP cabal and their close acolytes who were scared. They were worried about whether the US Embassy would retaliate and they and their families would be hit with visa cancellations.
Guyanese believed that the US would have reciprocated with visa revocation. We know now from the joint press conference of the US Ambassador and Dr Roger Luncheon that there isn’t going to be a tit for tat.
We will not know if the Ambassador himself wanted to retaliate and he sought advice from Washington D.C. We don’t know if the State Department advised against it. We can only speculate why the US didn’t want the visa fight. One reason could be that the experts in Washington felt that the visa battle could have made the Guyana Government look good in the eyes of the world, in that the PPP would have gone crying to international bodies and people would have asked how could the US fight a little, obscure country that no one in the world knows about.
One suspects that the US just didn’t want to get into a spat with a country that it has no interest in, either in terms of investments or geopolitics. Had the US Embassy issued visa abrogation, the fallout would have seriously undermined the power of the PPP Government.
The rich and powerful who keep the PPP Government alive would have put serious pressure on Ramotar and company to make peace with the US. The PPP knows that once it endangers the financial well-being of the nouveau riche, socialites, bling bling followers, wannabes and billionaires that support it, then that is a slippery road.
The US Embassy has put on hold the LEAD programme commonly referred to as the democracy project. There will be no visa retaliation. Mr. Bradbury does not have to pack his bags. The question then is who won? To all Guyanese it is the PPP, since the PPP leadership was fanatical in its quest to get the project stopped and when it could not, asked for it to be re-shaped. Now that the enterprise has been put in suspension, it is logical to conclude that the PPP won.
But all is not what it appears, as any student of philosophy would tell you. The US Embassy did not lose; in fact it won. How? As a small country, if in a fight with the US, the Government of Guyana is losing credibility, it is possible it could go to the US Embassy and ask to save face. It doesn’t mean that the US will humiliate the Guyana Government or ask for its pound of flesh.
This is what may have happened and we will never know because those are sensitive materials between two governments. The PPP leadership may have asked the US Ambassador to put the project on hold because it was rapidly losing credibility. And indeed it was. First, the presidency insisted the project must cease. This demand was made months ago and the US Embassy bluntly refused.
Secondly, sections of the arrangements were continuing even as Ramotar and company kept demanding the stoppage. Thirdly, Mr. Bradbury quietly ignored Rohee’s termination of work permit letter and was seen in his car driving and living in Guyana.
In such a situation, the PPP was fast losing credibility in the battle. And there was nothing it could have done. The US Embassy was not freezing the covenant, Mr. Bradbury was not going anywhere, and Guyanese were clamouring for visa retaliation from the Embassy.
It is possible that Ramotar and company asked for the generous retreat by the US Ambassador and he was kind enough to do it? Being a diplomat, he probably will know that after he had backpedaled, the Guyana Government will get into some serious machismo boasting and chauvinistic showing-off.
But he will know that such is expected because it is part of the package. In other words, he expects the Guyana Government to do things to make it look that it won.
This is one explanation for the step down by the US Ambassador. Another explanation could be some serious realpolitik planning by the Embassy. The US may have come around to the reality that it doesn’t want to give the PPP leadership something to which it can go to its supporters with and cry how the US is beating up on a small country.
But the US will have re-shaped the programme and the objectives will be the same. It will be a case of substance and form. Luncheon and Ramotar are fooling themselves.
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