Is David Granger behaving like Bharrat Jagdeo?

Aug 02, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

If I ask the question, it is expected that readers would want to know my own thoughts. I will as early as these opening lines say yes, if what has been circulated about the appointment of Dr. Mark Bynoe is based on plain facts. Here is what has been publicized so far: 1– The President chose Dr. Bynoe himself to fill the position as Head of the Department of Energy (DoE). 2 – The position was not advertised and if it was, there wasn’t a pool from which Bynoe’s application was chosen. 3 – There was agreement during the tenure of Dr. Jan Mangal that the advertisement would have been done globally to attract applicants who have experience and qualifications in the energy sector; it doesn’t seem that was done. 4 – There is a five-minister team that is currently overlooking the energy sector until the DoE comes into existence and it is reported that they did not know about Bynoe’s appointment.
Finally, there appears to be both a lack of experience and relevant qualifications in the energy sector by Dr. Bynoe.
Those are the five dimensions to the Bynoe selection. If they are based on incontrovertible facts, then my answer is definite – Granger is behaving like Jagdeo. This is the direction Jagdeo as president led the government into. He unilaterally made decisions. Cabinet was not an equal partner in decision-making. Jagdeo exercised hegemony over his government after he won the 2011 general elections. The reality after 2015 was that the Jagdeo style of governance was over because there wasn’t a single-party government but a coalition cabinet. To any high school kid, a coalition means different parties ruling the country, and the head of government cannot do whatever he/she wants if what he/she does is anathema to the other members in the governing circles
This happened two weeks ago in Germany. A minister threatened to pull his party of out the government if Chancellor Merkel did not reshape her immigration policy. She agreed to. Since 2015, there have been adumbrations in political and academic quarters that the AFC is not an independent party in the coalition, but prefers to shape its existence in power as being part of a unified cabinet.
Political analyst, Dr. David Hinds puts it another way. He wrote that the AFC continues to accept ownership of many of the unpopular emanations of APNU’s leadership. One of the persistent remarks against the AFC is that the Prime Minister’s role, as second in constitutional power, seems to have been lost in the vast forest of the Ministry of the Presidency. If one accepts that the AFC does not project an independent narrative within the spheres of power, then the big guy in the coalition virtually administers the state as a single-party formation and not a partnership. That big guy is the PNC.
This brings us to David Granger’s style of leadership. It is my analysis of his 38-year-old tenure that Granger is not deeply driven by democratic instincts and has no intention at the present time (I cannot predict the future and what he will do if he retains the presidency in 2020) to transform Guyana in ways that move this entire nation away from the destructive morass it has been living in.
Even if that is a frightening task that carries monumental energy with it, my opinion is Granger is nowhere near those endeavours, and I would say his record so far does not indicate any movement in that direction. This is a sad thing to say in the context of a nation whose lonely eyes have been crying for a modern, democratic future for the past seventy years. It is even sadder to think that after the most exalted opportunity was thrown away by the PPP after the 1992 election, that moment was recaptured by the forces of liberation in May 2015, only to fail again.
In journalism there is a pathway that is travelled daily, and it is one that brings suspicion by members of the public, it is called the ‘confidential source’. If you pick up any leading newspaper in the world, you cannot miss the publication of a story that was told to the newspaper by a confidential source. Without exception, every day the New York Times and the Washington Post carry news item on the Trump presidency fuelled by information supplied by an insider who chose to be anonymous, or a reliable source.
I will conclude by saying a source that I consider 100 percent reliable told me the president wanted Hinds and Lewis to be dropped from the Chronicle. Scents of Jagdeoism permeate New Garden Street.

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