Week of removals

Jun 17, 2017 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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This past week has been the week of removals. First, it was the removal of the Minister of Education and his redeployment to the Ministry of the Presidency where he will be an underling to the Minister of State.
Then there was the inevitable but unfortunate termination of the services of the Head of the Customs Anti- Narcotics Unit (CANU), Mr. James Singh.
The removal of Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine as the Minister of Education has nothing to do with performance. It has everything to do with the belief that Dr. Roopnaraine’s illness requires a reduced workload.
The Minister of Education has not underperformed. The performance in the educational sector cannot change overnight. The Minister has laid the framework for the advancement of the sector by highlighting the need for rounded education, setting in motion a Commission of Inquiry to identify problems within the sector which need fixing and by moving towards a new national educational strategy.
Those who wish to propel things faster may be courting disaster because uncontrolled change will lead to chaos, not progress.
Dr. Roopnaraine’s experience in education is irreplaceable and to put him to head a massive and dysfunction bureaucratic machinery called the public service is the ultimate insult to a former Guyana scholar.
It is premature reaction because there is no reason to doubt that Dr. Roopnaraine could have continued to do his job. The Minister of Agriculture was hospitalized not long after the government came to power. He was not given a lighter portfolio. A junior Minister was hospitalized locally and internationally and was not given a lighter work load.
Dr. Roopnaraine is a man who if he felt he could not have managed with the education portfolio because of his illness would have told the government this. The WPA should press for his reinstatement as a condition of their continued involvement with the government.
Dr. Roopnaraine is being replaced by a junior Minister who is an ex-military officer. This is part of a growing pattern within the government
The ideology of military supremacy is very much at work when it comes to the changes at the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit. The head of that unit has been removed following the launch of a Commission of Inquiry into some incident involving vessels traversing Guyana’s waters and whether foreign powers were involved.
That COI was a mere smokescreen. It was used as pretext to remove the Head of CANU so as to facilitate the creation of a new anti-narcotics unit, expected to be headed by another ex-military officer.
Mr. James Singh’s removal will undermine the investments that foreign agencies have made in building local anti-narcotics capacity. Mr. Singh has enjoyed the confidence of international agencies involved in fighting drug trafficking.
His removal from the job represents a setback in international cooperation in the anti-drug fight. The international agencies will have to get to know the new head and this will take time. To remove someone with that sort of institutional knowledge and in whom much training has been invested, and to do so on the basis of some cock-and-bull story, shows just how far and dangerous the government is prepared to go in pursuit of the ideology of the military supremacy.
However, Singh’s removal was always on the card once it was signaled that the government was going to create a new anti- narcotics unit headed by a retired soldier.
The government came to power on the basis that the previous regime ran a narco-state. It therefore found itself in a position whereby it felt obligated to dismantle the institutional machinery which had been set up by the former regime to counter the trade in narcotics. Once the government had agreed to set up a new anti-narcotics unit, it was clear that an excuse would have had to be found to get rid of the head of CANU.
The ideology of military supremacy is now at full steam. The Education Ministry will now be headed by an ex-military officer and the President, himself an ex-military man, will assume responsibility for part of the portfolio. The reform of the security sector is operating out of the Ministry of the Presidency and is headed by a former British soldier.
The new anti-narcotics unit is going to be headed by an ex-military man. The President’s press department is headed by an ex-military man who is also the editor of the New Nation, the organ of the People’s National Congress Reform.
The Head of National Events within the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport is a military person. The Head of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation is an ex-solider as was the person he succeeded. An ex-soldier was catapulted to a senior position within the Guyana Revenue Authority and is likely to one day become the Commissioner General. The adviser on national security and the adviser on the environment to the government are also both retired army officers.
The patter is clear. Civilian jobs are being handed out to ex-military personnel. It is an expression of the ideology of military supremacy at work. It has only just begun.

 

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