The Secretary General isn’t going to let Granger dirty CARICOM

Jul 05, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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The hot question at this moment is what type of attacks we will see on the Secretary-General (SG) of CARICOM, Mr. Irwin La Rocque. His adumbration on Friday was a diplomatic response to the crude distortion of David Granger on the CARICOM recount team.
Let us look at the sequence. Granger said he accepts Lowenfield’s submission. He explained his endorsement of the numbers Lowenfield cited by referring to several observations of the CARICOM recount team about fraudulent occurrences on voting day. This was a deliberate act of misleading by Granger.
The CARICOM recount team using pellucid language and unambiguous pronouncements concluded that the 2020 election voting was a valid process that reflected the desire and will of the Guyanese people. You have to be an immoral creature to use the recount team’s report to reject the results of the 2020 election. That is not scientifically possible. The equivalent example is saying that the Black Lives Matter movement began in Russia and not the US.
But Granger, in what can only be term ignorance or dishonesty or barefacedness is accepting the frightening ghoulishness of Lowenfield and using the recount team’s submission to justify as his reason for embarking on ugly autocratic bullyism. In steps the GS of CARICOM. As a high-level prestigious international public servant, diplomacy is all you can expect and will receive from Mr. La Rocque.
Using simple language devoid of any direct references to anyone, without identification of specific persons, he modestly told the world that he has confidence in the CARICOM recount team’s work. Here are his words, “I have EVERY (emphasis mine) confidence in the work they produced.” The key word here is EVERY. It has multi-dimensional overtones and is filled with clarity.
By using the word “every” it means that he has placed emphatic value on what the team has concluded. Contrast his statement with this one: “I have confidence in the work they produced.” This latter statement contains a weak acceptance and lacks expansive and definitive assertion. It can carry a loose interpretation. My contestation is that the SG determined that by the use of the word, “every”, he has accepted with psychological surety the report the team has submitted to him.
But there is another angle involved in the La Rocque position. It involves professional ethics and professional dignity. La Rocque was just not a participant-observer to the Mottley/Granger/Jagdeo rendezvous. He was not just a witness. He was not just a bureaucrat standing behind the signatories like a security rank.
He is the Secretary General of CARICOM, thereby he is the legal guardian of the confabulatory covenants that CARICOM embarks on. His legal knowledge has to be imprinted on the decisions CARICOM made. So when the Mottley/ Granger/Jagdeo “détente” meeting was being shaped, he was the crucial factor in that he had to tell the CARICOM chairwoman whether she had legal coverage to engage in such a process. In turn, the chairwoman would have asked him to use his office to legalize the process and determine the shape of the team’s work.
There isn’t need for a doctorate to educate you into the reason why the SG endorsed the work of the recount group. Because it was his recount group. He was responsible for their conduct and was their guardian in a hostile environment. Logically, they submitted the final document to him.
Now put yourself in La Rocque’s shoes when he heard Granger accepting the Frankenstein edifice of Lowenfield and cited CARICOM team as justification. La Rocque had no option but to protect the credibility of himself, the recount group and CARICOM itself. Granger was telling the world that Lowenfield’s tabulation is a valid one because it was determined by the contents of the recount team’s work.
La Rocque knew this was distortion because the tabulation of the recount team and Lowenfield’s numbers are as opposite as negative and positive neutrons. Granger had dug himself deeper in the hole the devil engineered for him. How is he going to get out of the La Rocque picture? Through La Rocque’s emanation, CARICOM is of the belief that APNU+AFC was not the winner of the election.
Enter Joe Harmon. As APNU+AFC’s campaign manager, he has been lashing out wildly at every prominent global personality who accused him of rigging. Nicknamed “Joe Shanlin” and “Lil Joe” by the satirical column “Dem Boys Seh” in KN and by me as “jalebe” after the Hindu sweet cake for his employment of the American PR firm, JJ&B, Harmon will have to invent another scatological vocabulary to paint La Rocque with. Of course, only to make himself a clown for the umpteen time.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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