Granger and Nagamootoo have to be careful who and what they defend

Apr 22, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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In politics, friendship runs deep.  It is a worldwide behavioural pattern. Presidents and Prime Ministers cannot bring themselves to openly criticize people that they swam with in murky waters and with whom they roamed the world over the long years in search of support. But there are established institutions and norms to save presidential and prime ministerial colleagues when they transgress in older countries, institutions and norms that a nation like Guyana does not have.
One of those institutions is private income. When an American, Japanese, Indian or European state official embarrasses his/her governmental leader, they save the day by resigning so the leader can continue to shower high praise on the departed official, but the storm dies down right away because the person is no longer in the government.
Two examples should suffice. It is generally accepted in political analysis that Peter Mandelson was the chief tactician that brought the British Labour Party, under Tony Blair, back to power in the late nineties after a long journey in the wilderness.
Naturally Mandelson became a Minister in the Blair Cabinet. But when his ministry conducted an investigation into indiscretions by another Minister, it was revealed that Mandelson had borrowed a huge sum from the very Minister he was investigating. He resigned to save the Prime Minister’s name from being soiled. Mandelson secured several consultancies in the world of high business. He didn’t starve.
The second example is from the US. Generally credited with the strategies that led to the presidential success of George W. Bush, Karl Rove found himself in many scandals, including naming a CIA agent whose husband had embarrassed President Bush over the issue of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Rove resigned and there was no shortage of lucrative employment, including contracts with the Wall Street Journal and Newsweek.
In Guyana, the world of politics is vastly different. Prime Ministers and Presidents in Guyana stick with their defaulting colleagues because if dismissal comes about, where would they find an income? If a big state official is a historian, where would he/she find an attractive salary in Guyana if he/she is removed from office?  How many business places in Guyana will award substantial remuneration to a person with a history degree? It is against this background that Presidents and Prime Ministers tend to not want to accuse close colleagues of conduct unbecoming.
Another very important reason, which is too crucial to an understanding of Guyanese society to be left out of the discussion, is that we do not have a morally accountable culture in this country. We never did and I doubt we will have one in the foreseeable future (see last Wednesday’s column on this topic). Lacking such an endowed principle, ruling politicians carelessly and shamelessly come to the rescue of their friends when misconduct becomes grave and unacceptable.
It was Roger Luncheon who openly extolled the behaviour of Priya Manickchand when she misbehaved at the home of the US Ambassador. The PPP condoned, fervently, as if its life depended on it, the totally unacceptable misconduct of Kellawan Lall.
Both the President and the Prime Minister have to tread carefully in such a sensitive situation in a country like this. I am somewhat nonplussed that Prime Minister Nagamootoo could defend his appointees at the Chronicle over the continuation of political partisanship which virtually killed the Chronicle market over the past fifteen years under the PPP.
The senior editors should not have even for a moment contemplated dropping two columns by Guyanese icon, Dr. David Hinds. We left that world behind after May 11, 2015. I read the two columns and I didn’t see even a line of defamation or scandal. The Chronicle also refused to carry the press release Transparency Institute of Guyana Inc. (TIGI) sent on the Harmon fiasco.
One would have expected both the President and the Prime Minister to come out swinging against the senior editors at Chronicle and also the Board chairman. The senior editors for their censorship and the board chairman for her interpretation that the Hinds column and the rejection of the press release of TIGI, were matters for the editor.
The President did not offer a comment on the Chronicle’s censorship, but the Prime Minister’s office did. In a press release, there is absolutely no reference to the two banned columns and the non-appearance of the TIGI press release
I don’t believe even for a fleeting moment that the President or the Prime Minister knew about these two forms of censorship. But this is where their silence becomes confusing. Why would they not want to castigate Chronicle’s senior editors for returning to the road of censorship?

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