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Presidential Discourse and Beyond

Dec 05, 2020 Editorial

Kaieteur News – In recent news coming out of America, three living former American Presidents – Barrack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton – were reported as coming together to publicly take the COVID-19 vaccine, a move meant to bolster public in the upcoming vaccination government programme. The idea is that a bipartisan approach at the most senior symbolic level is necessary in a time of crisis as America is not only fighting a pandemic with the world’s highest rates of deaths per day and over quarter million citizens have lost their lives.

Yesterday, Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali extended invitation to all former Presidents of this country to a meeting, one he said that he hoped would signal inclusion and prepare a space for discussion on national issues. The former presidents invited are Samuel Hinds, Bharrat Jagdeo, Donald Ramotar and David Granger. Considering that Ali does not need a special invitation to invite his fellow PPP comrades, the reality is, that invitation really is for Granger.

This is of course where a harsh reality kicks in – there is nothing in Granger’s behaviour since March 2, when he decisively lost the elections to President Ali that shows that he is prepared to act as a former President and to acknowledge Ali as the current President. Outside of the relentless rhetoric of fraud, and the elections petition based upon that rhetoric, there is the fact that Granger – like his behavioral twin, Trump, when it comes to US President-elect Biden – has not publicly acknowledged Ali as President. When pressed upon conceding in August, only after the international community had drawn a line in the sand and threatened sanctions against him and those enabling his attempt to rig the elections, only then did he step aside and did not have the grace to concede.

Indeed, a reminder of his protean postures on conceding may be necessary. In July of this year, when pressured by civil actors to end his four-month attempt at rigging the election and to concede, Granger stated that he would concede after GECOM made a declaration. When GECOM finally made that declaration on August 2, when asked to concede, the former – and that is a word that he should acknowledge – president simply stated that he did not concede, GECOM merely made a declaration.

That he is still extended an invitation despite this disgraceful obstinacy on his part needs to be taken into account, and President Ali has to be given recognition for the political maturity he has shown in looking over this. Unless he introduces some deliberately humiliating caveat, the invitation by President Ali should be taken for what he says it is – an act of inclusion extended to all former Presidents to discuss the way forward for the country at a critical juncture.

All that said, when it comes to discourse for the greater good, whatever the good faith intention that might be behind the invitation, the President, if he is interested in sustainable and effective inclusion and reconciliation, cannot restrict his key moves to reaching out to a predecessor that has not only shown himself to be unstable but has, after winning close to 50 percent of the vote, completely disappeared from public life and the responsibility of being accountable or even responsive to his constituents.

In short, Granger’s inevitable refusal to meet, or to move forward even if he answers the invitation positively, cannot be fatal to the process of national inclusion and reconciliation. If it is treated as such, then President Ali cannot escape the charge of political theatre. It would be as if the former US Presidents invited Trump to be part of the public vaccination programme and if he refused, said that it was not worth vaccinating the general public because of his refusal. The invitation to Granger for dialogue, along with all former Presidents, needs to be part of a larger more clearly defined infrastructure of reconciliation and healing, led certainly by President Ali, but including political and civil society leaders. And while the political leadership is skirting around it, no Presidential discourse – if by some miracle it takes place – will be complete without concrete commitments to constitutional reform.

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