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A travesty of diplomatic protocols
Dear Editor,
On each occasion that I think people in this government can’t embarrass this country and its citizens more with the unthinking and careless, I am proven wrong. At the most trying of times, government representatives are exemplars of the worst in us with the untimely, the undignified, and the unbelieving. The star government performer in this instance was Guyana’s Hon. Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hugh Todd.
A smiling Foreign Affairs Minister, Hugh Todd as he greets the Russian Ambassador to Guyana Alexander Kurmaz
I understand that there is/was a picture of the Foreign Minister meeting with the Russian Ambassador, and what a spectacle it was, a travesty of diplomatic protocols, in total ignorance and disdain for the seriousness of the moment. The moment was of invasion and shelling from numerous points, and of war waged with vigor and power, in furtherance of a broadening nationalist vision, compliments of Vlad(imir) the Invader, the warrior, the aggressor. In such an hour of supreme agony for the people of Ukraine, there was Guyana’s Foreign Minister engaging in what I have no choice but to term the surreal. If this is not an authentic picture, then I owe the Foreign Minister an apology, without qualification.
But the evidence abounding in public is of our own dear Foreign Minister smiling, glad handing, backslapping, and hugging the Russian Ambassador. I shrank, so cannot attest to whether there was any kissing. Though admittedly green in the gills for this most visible and vital of positions (more on this another time involving other PPPC selections), it was appalling how naïve and thoughtless, even amateur, the Hon. Foreign Minister of Guyana came across. There could not have been a more poignant, a more dangerous, moment than that of war and its perils to a nation’s sovereignty and the safety of its citizens. That is the plight of Ukrainians before the assembled might of the old KGB man, now headman of the Russia that he dreams of restoring.
Editor, even a layman like me, totally unschooled in the protocols of diplomatic etiquette and associated comportment, would conduct myself with more of the kind of aloofness and austerity that the occasion of war demanded. The Russian Ambassador had to have been summoned and made to feel a degree of chilliness that should bring back memories of Siberia in the throes of deepest winter. Not this utter foolishness of hugging and handshaking and good ole time hobnobbing, as though all was well with the world, especially as the Russians see it.
The Ambassador had to be called to the carpet (I would refrain from rolling him in it), and read the riot act in the coldest of terms. It cannot be a friendly visit, a jovial exchange, between friendly relations. Not with what was unleashed, and what was happening in Ukraine. It didn’t send the right message to Ukrainians, or to other less impacted watchers. It is at times like these that I recognise how this country has gone to hell in a hand basket, how leaders on steroids put the callow and clueless where they don’t belong.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
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