The authoritarian posture of President David Granger

Sep 18, 2018 Letters

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Dear Editor,
This past week, we witnessed two brazen examples of sheer, mind-numbing hypocrisy practised by President David Granger and APNU+AFC.
It is not simply the hypocrisy that bothers me, it is the clear and present threats to Guyana’s democracy.
Firstly, President Granger demanded justification for the Leader of the Opposition’s rejection of the President’s nominee for the Chancellor of the Judiciary, ignoring his own rejection of eighteen nominees for the GECOM Chair without any explanation.
Secondly, the Granger-led APNU+AFC flatly rejected the nominees of the Guyana Teachers Union for the chair of the salary arbitration panel without any reasons given.
This is clear evidence of double standards practiced by this government on a daily basis.
The rejection of the nominees for the teachers’ arbitration panel, without any explanation, by APNU+AFC, is curious and capricious.
The names of each of the persons is someone close to the People’s National Congress and one of them previously headed an arbitration in 1999 that addressed a salary dispute between public servants and the PPP.
The union, to their credit, provided detailed credentials to support each of their nominees. The union also rejected the names proposed by the government, but they gave a sound reason why they found the names proposed by the government “not-fit-and-proper” – both nominees work in senior positions in the government.
The truth is the government wants a person to carry out its bidding, just as they did for GECOM and other positions.
Arbitrary, capricious rejection of nominees to serve in important positions, insisting they do not owe anyone an explanation, has become a norm for President Granger and APNU+AFC. They act as dictators, always rejecting accountability.
The President rejected the names of 18 distinguished Guyanese proposed by the Leader of the Opposition, persons whose qualifications were comprehensively presented, for the position of Chair of GECOM.
The President refused to provide any explanation, insisting that he has no constitutional requirement to do so. As with the arbitration panel to adjudicate on salaries of teachers, Granger wanted a sycophant for GECOM.
Thus, he acted arbitrarily, imperially rejecting the national cry for an explanation.
The same modus operandi applies to naming the Chancellor of the Judiciary and the Chief Justice.
The persons presently serving enjoy widespread confidence across the political spectrum. The President has ignored the incumbents and proposed a candidate for the position of Chancellor who has been serving outside of Guyana for decades.
He has not offered the nation an explanation for rejecting both persons who presently perform the duties of Chancellor and Chief Justice.
He has proposed a demotion for the person acting as the Chancellor, asking her to move downward from the Chancellor of the Judiciary to the Chief Justice and has no place for the distinguished incumbent Chief Justice.
What makes the incumbent Chancellor unqualified for the Chancellor’s position, but makes her suitable for the position of Chief Justice?
The same authoritarian posture guides the selection of a new police commissioner.
The President appointed a person who might well be a person “fit and proper” for this position.
But the President diminishes the new COP by not giving an explanation why the man who was acting in that position for almost a year was by-passed for the position of COP or any of the Deputy Police Commissioners.
It might well be that the man acting as the Police Commissioner for the last year is not qualified for any senior position, but the President needs to inform the nation what made this person qualified to serve at the highest level for more than a year, a person his own Minister of Public Security pushed into the position, while hastily forcing the previous commissioner into prematurely forced retirement.
It is sheer, mind-numbing hypocrisy, therefore, that the same president wants the Leader of the Opposition to provide a reason for rejecting the President’s nominee for the Chancellor’s position.
It should be noted that the Leader of the Opposition has signalled he is not addressing the suitability or non-suitability of the candidate nominated for the Chief Justice position.
It is just that the Leader of the Opposition is not in a position to address the Chief Justice nomination until the confirmation of the nominee for the Chancellor’s position.
The President and his cloying sycophants demand that the Constitution does not explicitly requires him to provide an explanation.
While this is steaming garbage, can he and his sycophants point us to the Constitutional requirement for the Leader of the Opposition to provide an explanation? What is good for the goose must be good for the gander.
Dr. Leslie Ramsammy

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