China’s claim, Guyana’s President commitment

Dec 19, 2021 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Sometimes this life brings laughter, even when we don’t want to, because of the sheer outrageousness of the context and circumstances. One such situation came to light recently, and was carried in an article by a well-respected and globally read American newspaper, with the following as the subject line: “Ahead of Biden’s Democracy Summit, China says: We’re also a democracy” (New York Times, December 7). To say that that claim is a heavy shade on the far side would be an understatement, so incredible it is. This democracy claim by China is the equivalent of Guyana’s own President Ali making the farfetched claim that his government has been about transparency on everything related to its oil dealings. As to which one brings the house down for more ridiculousness and brazenness, we reserve judgment and leave that to readers.
In China, as the New York Times elaborated, “the Communist Party of China rules the country’s 1.4 billion people with no tolerance for opposition parties; that its leader, Xi Jinping, rose to power through an opaque political process without popular elections; that publicly calling for democracy in China is punished harshly, often with long prison sentences.” The Chinese Communists may not know it, or revere it, but those are the cornerstones of any democratic process worth the name or claims to such standing.
Those, however, do not make a difference to the assertions of the Chinese Communists, whose stance coming out of Beijing is that “its system represents a distinctive form of democracy, one that has dealt better than the West with challenges like the pandemic.” That may be so from the perspective of that nation’s hardline communists, but that does not make it come close to even measuring up with what democracy is all about at its most basic level. With due respect to the Chinese people, we think that its Communist leaders have a long learning curve about what constitutes democracy, and what does not.
To extend this point some more, our objective is not so much about the accuracy or reasonableness of what the Chinese Communists claim about their special brand of democracy, but of how crucial words and their associated concepts and their meanings can be twisted to suit any purpose that the speaker has in mind. From the point of view of the speaker or claimant, it does not matter whether such comes across as the embodiment of utter ludicrousness, but that it has been placed before an absorbing public, most of the time, a docile and captive one and it must, therefore, stand as gospel for the mere fact of being said. For this is the very claim that Guyana’s own Head-of-State went public to proclaim a little while back.
Here, His Excellency, President Irfaan Ali, made the astonishing claim that he and his government have been about transparency on most things in which both have engaged in, and especially as such relates to management and developments in this country’s recent oil discoveries. Like the Chinese Communists, all that Guyana’s President succeeded in doing then was to make himself come across as a man, who had lost touch with reality or someone who has extreme difficulty with truth and labours with what pretends to be about it or a leader, who can’t be given the benefit of the doubt to tell a full and straight story. It must be appreciated that we are struggling to be courteous to the nation’s Head-of-State (just like we toiled to be frank, but fair, with the Chinese Communists).
In the growing Guyana oil story, a largely rancid and rickety one so far, secrecy has been the order of the day. Yet its president, who had and still has the demanding duty to be obedient to facts and accuracy, could make the bold and barefaced assertion that he and his government have been about nothing but transparency. It is tempting to state that Guyana’s President has lost some of his marbles with this oil, but we are content with saying that he lost sight of what transparency means to its core. When oil studies and money management details are hidden, that’s not transparency, but exemplary governmental skullduggery.

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