Hard truths…A fight over a phone

Apr 24, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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By: GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – The PPP Government has more headaches than its head can accommodate. It involves a phone and the one-sided fight over it. The President and other ranking government leaders like to make pretty speeches about the Guyana-America relationship. Like this fight over a phone, all the strength is on the side of the Emperors of the North. As with oil, all the power and decisions rest in the hands of the Norteamericanos. Interestingly, this phone plight puts the Government of Guyana in a predicament. It looks powerless, and it is. It is about what could be trapped in that phone, and the stories they tell of what is really going on here: A shot across the bow of the PPP Government.

I paused in reading of a Permanent Secretary and her seized phone. A PS is not a clerk, but a most senior public servant; that phone has much government business, possibly plenty of government secrets. PS of Ministry of Home Affairs is not PS of Amerindian Affairs, with every regard for indigenous Guyanese. Home Affairs means internal security, the Guyana Police Force, and the range of responsibilities. The PS is the CEO presiding over all that, a literal storehouse of detail. Oh, this is trouble for the PPP Government.

From the get-go, that phone retrieval was going to be a battle that couldn’t be won. Simply too much is in it, too many people are part of its electronic record. Some of them are not looked upon too kindly by the Americans, and some of the police business and other internal security business in this country provokes many frowns, more curses, in US Government circles. Recall that Embassy Security Alert. Pieces are lining up.

These are predicaments damaging to the PPP Government; worse still, Guyana. PPP Government friendliness to suspect power players, friendliness to doubtful local characters, now haunt. If the phone seizure was a shot across the PPP Government’s bow, the outright and insulting refusal to return it is a blow to midships. I think distrust has stopped all America-Guyana information sharing, as America secures its interests.

Another predicament for President, Vice President, Ministers, and public servants of a certain kind of distinctiveness is the corner into which this seized phone has backed all of them. Yesterday, the tenseness was over a phone seized. Tomorrow, it could be the bar raised and a person seized. The PS was wisely advised to return via London. Again and again, I go back to that American gospel: no permanent friends, only permanent interests.

The PPP powers would do well to get that into their heads. The PNC is right up the road, and straining at the leash to get a piece of the governance action. Now, top Guyanese public servants and politicians could be reduced to the ignominy of bypassing travel through the US, by detouring through Panama or Columbia. Europe looks similarly problematic since American reach and footprints there are dominant. This is a problem because there are no direct flights to China, India, even Africa. Emirates Airlines or Kuwait Airways, anyone? I wonder if the PS’ visa has been yanked, another jab to the eyes. The result is pariah without official pariah status. I did warn these big, bad brothers of mine: don’t mess with the Americans. Play straight. Have story to match.

The next predicament faced by luminaries in the PPP Government is how to conduct their business, both official and covert. The PS’s phone is not a random seizure, but one most likely propelled by considerable intelligence gathered from right here. This means that the Americans are watching and listening, and they know who is where (and into what), and what is going down. This backs ministers, heads of departments, commanders, commissioners, and others against a wall. Talking in their offices could be a constant anxiety attack; there is no peace in cars, no off-limits, secure places.

Considering the range of American reach in Guyana, government officials have two places left to manage their affairs, especially undercover ones. One is the vast National Park. The other is the long Seawall. Burnham and Jagan used to meet there. Then again, America has this place so wired that even those may not be as secure from eavesdropping as is hoped for, or believed. Who is going to bet money on that, possesses such confidence? Certainly, not I; and I am not a government man.

This effectively means that elected and selected government officials are now forced to work with more phones than usual. One for aboveboard business, another for personal business, and a third for business that is usually best when no one else knows about it, but the two parties involved in the schemes. All of this can be avoided by following two simple steps. Do the right kind of business. Do business in the right way. And do the right business in the right way, but only with the right kind of people. Clearly America has soured on the PPP. Though China looks tempting, I wouldn’t recommend. We are too close to America. The PPP brought this upon itself.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• America, fight, GHK Lall, Home Affairs PS, phone

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