Has micromanagement returned?

Nov 02, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – It must be a lonely life for the country’s Vice President. Yesterday, images were posted on his Facebook page showing him all alone.

On Monday, he met with the Chinese Ambassador to Guyana Guo Haiyan. He was all alone on one side of the table while the Chinese Ambassador was on the other side, flanked by two of her representatives. He also met with European Union Head in Guyana in a one-to-one meeting. No one was there to record what was said and no representative from the Foreign Ministry, as is usually the established protocol in other countries, was present.

It is surprising that when he did meet, on the same day, with the General Manager of the Caribbean Country Department of the Inter-American Development Bank, he was in the company of two top officials based in the Ministry of Finance. Yet, when he met with the top EU and Chinese representatives, he had no personnel from the Foreign Ministry present.  Of interest would be to know in what capacity he met with those individuals and teams. He is not the Minister of Foreign Affairs nor is he the country’s Finance Minister. He holds no Ministerial responsibility but has been assigned, according to the Official Gazette, oversight responsibilities for finance, natural resources and the environment.

Oversight responsibilities are not on the same level as Ministerial responsibilities which would make him accountable to the National Assembly. The Vice President is constitutionally a Member of Cabinet and his office falls within the Office of the President. It is not unknown for foreign diplomats to meet with government officials. They may be asked to discuss with those persons the development programmes which their countries are pursuing with the Government of Guyana.  However, there is within the Foreign Ministry a Department of International Cooperation which holds responsibilities for coordinating economic cooperation with other states and in the exercise of such responsibilities, the department coordinates with the various subject ministries. It amounts to sidelining the work of the Foreign Ministry, under which the Department of International Cooperation falls, by not involving Foreign Service personnel in the discussions which the Vice President held on Monday.

This however, has long been the disjointed approach to governance by the PPPC government. The same situation exists where the President meets with investors and other persons without the subject Ministers always being present. This should not happen because in any government, the relevant subject Ministers must be privy to the contents of the discussions on matters which concern them.

But the PPPC, unfortunately, has had its own style. Power and authority, and one suspects decision-making, appear to be concentrated in a few persons’ hands. Only yesterday, this column had to lament that the Men on Mission was a presidential initiative and not one which is being managed by the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security. Ironically, yesterday the said ministry launched another initiative aimed at gender equality and targeting hinterland women. This is the sort of disjointed governance system which Guyanese have to put up with and which stifles development.

When authority is concentrated in the hands of one or a few persons and where there is a tendency for micromanagement, as opposed to delegation of responsibilities and authority, decision-making becomes also centralised and this reduces the pace of development. No wonder so many people have to seek audiences with the President and Vice President to get things achieved.

It is within this context that Guyana has found itself in a most embarrassing situation. Earlier this year, Guyana’s leaders, seemingly unconcerned that it was an election year in Brazil, met with the now deposed President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, in order to pursue an energy accord. The opinion polls were suggesting a likely Lula victory. But the disjointed manner in which the initiative was pursued would suggest that advice may not have been sought as to the timing of the Memorandum of Understanding with Brazil. Now the government has to be anxious as to whether the Lula will honour that agreement given that it involves the establishment of an energy arc in which natural gas is expected to play a major role. Lula is likely to have a strong environmental protection policy and this can shatter Guyana’s hopes of creating an energy arc along the lines suggested by the Inter-American Development Bank. What is even more astonishing is that the PPPC has been in office now for more than two years and it is still to appoint substantive ambassadors to Venezuela and Brazil. But perhaps, this neglect of the country’s national interest with key neighbouring states can be explained by those photographs which appeared on the Vice President’s Facebook page.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not this newspaper.)

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