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What happened to the Diplomatic Corps?

Nov 01, 2020 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Where is the Diplomatic Corps resident in Guyana today? What happened to its once very visible, very vocal members from the still mighty North America, the once mighty United Kingdom, the hoping-to-be mighty one day European Union, and the way less-than-mighty Organization of American States? Were those extraordinary envoys all expelled from Guyana’s shores?
From the evidence, it would appear that a bag of feared and marauding cats bit their tongues today and every day since they got their rewards, realized electoral objectives. Undoubtedly, that would be their own secret ones, the real ones that have absolutely nothing to do with democracy in Guyana. They were at once anywhere and everywhere, be it GECOM confines, or the now infamous Ashmin’s Building, or in the middle of the babble from Guyana’s airwaves.
A lot of it sounded good back then in those five months, but now that reality has returned to Guyana, all the stalwarts of the intervening diplomatic corps have disappeared.
Like Carthusian monks, they have retreated to their comforting monasteries and obey the vows of the self-imposed silence that they now find convenient to exhibit. The Americans and Canadians and Europeans and the well-named OAS (there is no place for ‘Latin’ in there, which reinforces whose business and priorities come first) did not give a damn about interfering in Guyana’s internal affairs, or observing the conventions demanded by its sovereignty.
But today, all of them are immovable sticklers for adhering to both letter and spirit of what internal affairs and national sovereignty are all about. Now that they got what they wanted, they weave these tangled webs that are best served by funereal silence. Pious, they struggle clumsily to be, through the pathetic hypocrisies of hands off and stoic non-interference.
Well, the members of the diplomatic corps resident have much to be pleased about, the results of their governance groundwork and handiwork from the period December 2018 to August 2020. With now perfect vision, all citizens should be able to appreciate that the identification with, and pursuit of resolutions to ease, the cataclysmic plights of Guyanese were all about their interests, foreign objectives.
There was the Exxon retreat and eventual surrender by the PPP/C government. There was the US Secretary of State’s visit and his bag of goodies carried away (Exxon is not the biggest beneficiary of Guyana’s leadership idiocy).
And there was the recent arrival of Greeks (make that American commercial interests) bringing US$200B in gifts.
Like Troy of yore, PPP/C leaders did give up on Guyanese civilization, and all for the electoral gift horse looked in the mouth. The Americans came to draw first blood; the Europeans are on the way; and the neighbours in the OAS can’t wait to get a sweet, succulent piece of Guyana.
The PPP/C has done well with its kowtowing and bargaining of the welfare of this country. Unfortunately, citizens have not done as well. They get a few handouts (welcomed, to be sure), but the whole oil plantation has gone abegging with nothing to show for it.
Recall that the Diplomatic Corps was all about transparency, democracy and honesty during Guyana’s elections. Those were good things. Its members could go one step further and do still better today by manifesting some ethical equivalency, through pressing for oil transparency (oil blocks) and contract democracy (Exxon and partners) and leadership honesty (governance integrity).
The lack of these elements will only confirm the studied hypocrisy of the Diplomatic Corps following orders (like you know who back in the 1930s and 1940s) from leaders in the home front.
The Diplomatic Corps, to maintain an even keel, must weigh in and contribute to the conversation on Success squatters and their treatment. The Diplomatic Corps must register its collective voice, through the appearance of lack of bias, by condemning the continuing racial pogroms occurring in the Guyana public service, which flourishes under the flag of ‘political appointees.’ The Diplomatic Corps was energetic and effusive in the pursuit of so-called electoral democracy for the longest while and in the strongest terms. The Diplomatic Corps has gone too far, interfered too much, to turn back now. Anytime it does so today, it embodies terrible deceits and condones dangerous practices.

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