Some coincidences require explanation

Apr 27, 2023 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo recently confirmed that his government hired a United States based firm to provide services for it. The company is known for providing public relations, lobbying and advisory services.

The Vice President’s confirmation was made at a press conference which he hosted. Interestingly none of the journalists present asked just what services were being provided by the company and why Guyana would have needed such services. It is amazing that they were interested in what services were provided yet are tripping over themselves to ascertain why the phone of a Permanent Secretary was allegedly confiscated by the US authorities recently

It is hoped that someone will insist that the Vice President to provide details of why these services were necessary and what were the fees paid to the company. It has been suggested that the firm was paid a whopping US$35,000 per month or about $G7M.

Most interesting also were the reasons given by the Vice President as to why it terminated the contract with the firm. The Vice President said that the government found out that the firm was working for a local business and as such opted to allow the contract to run to the end of its terms.

But why would the government have to terminate the contract simply because the firm was doing work for a Guyanese business? Once there is no conflict of interest, there is no reason why the firm should not be able to serve two separate Guyanese clients.

There is no conflict of interest? Or is there? This makes it all the more necessary for the government to explain just what services the firm was providing to it.

Anti-government forces in the diaspora are accusing the government of practising racial discrimination. But these very forces lack credibility and will hardly likely be taken seriously by US legislators and policymakers.

Obviously, there will be some politicians to who are seeking to attract the votes of Guyanese living in the US.  Some of these politicians may feign support for those claiming that the PPP/C government is practising discrimination.

But the whole world knows what took place in Guyana after the March 2020 general elections. They know about the discredited narratives that were peddled and they know who are the persons peddling these narratives. No one is going to take seriously these narratives and those who peddle them.

But if the government is worried about these charges, it should explain why it did not pursue a lobby soon after it got back into office. At that time, the United States had imposed travel restrictions on persons who it felt were involved in seeking to undermine the elections.  It said that the restrictions could be extended to family members of the unnamed persons. Canada and the United Kingdom threatened similar restrictions.

It would appear that these restrictions were lifted after the PPP/C assumed office. The PPP/C has made it clear that what happened between 2nd March 2020 and the 2nd August 2020 must never again reoccur.

But if the PPP/C was really interested in ensuring that there will never again be another attempt to rig elections in Guyana, it should have initiated a strong lobby in the United States for the travel restrictions to be made permanent. It could have pointed to the dangers that rigging elections would have set for democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean where there is a now supposed to be a rising tide of left-wing governments.

The PPP/C government has let the ball drop. Instead of hiring an American firm for reasons yet unknown to the public, it should have hired the firm to lobby to make permanent the travel restrictions on those who were sanctioned for their alleged role in seeking to distort the results of the elections.

The United States has a number of lobbying firms. In the early 1990’s, the PPP/C had hired an American legal firm to help smooth over relations with the United States as the country prepared for the 1992 elections. So there is no shortage of firms which the PPP/C government could have used to provide lobbying and advisory services.

During the election campaign, the PPP/C hired Mercury, a foreign public relations firm, to do work for it. This decision proved important because this firm proved instrumental in helping to mobilize opposition to the attempt to rig the March 2020 elections.

But is it not truly amazing that a local firm should choose the same firm as the government did? Some coincidences require explanation.

(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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• advisory services, Bharrat Jagdeo, lobbying, public relations, Vice President

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