David Granger: the failure of leadership

Feb 28, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

People would come to me from all walks of life (I swear up to yesterday outside Survival Supermarket) and inquire; “How do you manage to write a column every day”. I would laugh and say; “This is Guyana, I can write two each day.”
Seriously, this is one of the world’s societies where political, sociological and social occurrences are so electrically driven that an analyst can do two pieces each day.
I have put on the backburner many exigent subjects that I had every intention of publishing but they got overrun by events. For instance, a column on the complete mess of the 2017 telephone directory, which was to be done since October last year but other topics keep coming up.
The argument that is about to unfold was nowhere in my thinking but a few days ago, I read about the two UG unions castigating the Government for a defective approach to governance in relation to how UG council members are appointed. Thus was born this column right here.
I never thought of doing a column on the Black Panther movie phenomenon until I saw ACDA members dressing up in African clothes to attend the movie at the cinema. It has led me to look at the low state of Black consciousness in Guyana. So that item is forthcoming.
Dr. Shahabuddeen was nowhere in my thinking when he died but then there flowed a back and forth on his legacy in the letter pages of this newspaper (as recent as yesterday) so I thought I would join the debate. A column on that is forthcoming.
Then out of the blue came an editorial of Kaieteur News last Sunday that was a pyrotechnical endorsement of the man, Forbes Burnham, and his policies. On the same day, in the Stabroek News, there was an interview with the daughter of one of the well known names in the seventies, Frank Noel. The daughter was severe on Burnham’s authoritarian character. Noel accused Burnham of wanting to destroy her father because her father defied him. So I thought I would enter that polemic too. So an article on that is forthcoming.
So yes, in all seriousness, an analyst can do two columns a day. That is easy pickings in a country like Guyana where things are not logical and logical things have no life. The UG unions had their position rejected but their request was, and is logical. President Granger should have acceded to their plea.
I could still remember as I was driving on the Railway Embankment when Opposition Leader Granger called me to talk about my UG contract termination in January 2012. Then he met with the leaders of Operation Rescue UG during the result strike action.
I still could picture Opposition Leader, Granger, standing in front of us, inside the building of the Faculty of Agriculture promising so much to correct so many wrongs at UG by a government that was bent on destroying UG. Now Granger is President and power got in the way.
The unions’ desire is basic and simple. If the council has to be filled by a number of stakeholders, then let the stakeholders decide on their representatives. Let the women groups, Amerindian organisation, Bar Association, Medical Association, farmers’ groups decide on who they want to represent them.
How can one argue against that? The Jagdeo/Ramotar regimes did exactly what the unions were asking the Granger administration not to do. Maybe Mr. Granger is so blind with power that he cannot see that each little policy of the PPP, each big pathway of the PPP when the PPP was in government that his government adopts and implements is an opportunity for the PPP to expand its dwindling base.
I often hear that Granger does not want to micromanage his ministers so he leaves them with enough space to do their thing. What happens when the things they do are fundamentally anti-democratic? What happens when they do their things in opaque manner as opposed to transparent ways? He is the head of the Cabinet. Shouldn’t he act to correct assault on the democratic credentials of his government?
The answer is yes but I do not embrace, fully, the explanation of this instinct not to micromanage. I honestly cannot say that for the three years (come May it will be three) of his reign, Mr. Granger has demonstrated the type of leadership qualities a problematic, complex country like Guyana needs. That he is a decent man in the area of ethics and morality, I would no doubt agree though political intrigue can undermine that. But he is not an effective leader.

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David Granger: the failure of leadership

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