There must be some irony in the fact that as we approach the celebration of Sir Shridath Ramphal’s 80th birthday and as we acknowledge his “considerable contribution to Caribbean and Commonwealth diplomacy,” as David Granger puts it in his probing review of Shridath Ramphal: The Commonwealth and the World. Essays in Honour of His 80th Birthday, President Jagdeo has announced that Minister of Housing and Water, Mr Harrinarine Nawbatt, will be Guyana’s next ambassador to Brazil.
Indeed, anyone with a sense of humour and an appreciation for the absurdities of politics would have enjoyed the statement by the Head of the Presidential Secretariat last week that, as far as he was aware, Mr Nawbatt was the only candidate for the post but he also suspected that there might be others, as much as the report that the government was sending a cabinet minister as ambassador as an indication of the importance attached to Guyana’s relationship with Brazil.
For just as President Jagdeo appears to be ramping up his activism in the regional arena and on the international stage, through his passionate advocacy of a better deal for the countries harbouring the world’s remaining rainforests and his very vocal and vehement opposition to the Economic Partnership Agreement with Europe, just when suggestions are coming from some quarters that Guyana should be turning away from Caricom to pursue its ‘continental destiny’ through closer links with Brazil – just when, one might imagine, the President should feel the need to identify and deploy the country’s most able diplomatic assets to win broader support for his positions – he names another party loyalist to a strategically important representational post in the capital of South America’s most populous, largest and most powerful nation, which also just happens to be the guardian of the world’s biggest rainforest. Added to which, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry at the Palace of Itamaraty is home to one of the most sophisticated and able corps of diplomats in the Americas, if not the world.
Forget irony and our political theatre of the absurd. Something does not quite compute.
Now, this is not a criticism of Mr Nawbatt, who has held various positions of confidence under successive PPP/C administrations. He is generally held to be a nice man who has done good things as an accountant and public servant. But if he is confirmed in his post, replacing long-serving career diplomat and former Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mrs Cheryl Miles, then of Guyana’s thirteen overseas missions, only one substantive Head of Mission will be a professional diplomat.
Dr Timothy Critchlow, a career Foreign Service Officer, is our man in Havana. Our embassies or high commissions in Caracas, London, New Delhi, Ottawa, Paramaribo and Washington, and our consulates-general in New York and Toronto, are all headed by people close to the ruling party, some of whom, by dint of their longevity, now consider themselves career diplomats. Brussels, it is true, has a technocrat, Dr PI Gomes, as our ambassador, but he was appointed by the President from outside the foreign service. It is not clear either what is being done to find a successor to Mr Rudy Insanally as Permanent Representative to the UN, in spite of his retirement as Foreign Minister, a post he held concurrently for seven years. And Beijing has, disgracefully, not had an ambassador for some fifteen years now.
Nowhere is it written that one has to be a career diplomat to be an ambassador. Relevant skills and professional competencies are, after all, transferable. However, a fair mix of political and career appointments is generally expected and accepted in most countries. To have such a preponderance of political appointees in post, compounded by the fact that the incumbents in London and Paramaribo have been there since 1993, cannot be considered to be in the interests of maintaining a supremely competent, professional and motivated foreign service.
The woes of the foreign service are well known. Encouragingly, the word from Takuba Lodge is that the relatively new Foreign Minister is making efforts to improve pay and promote officers. She may even be considering new postings at this time. Perhaps Mrs Rodrigues-Birkett has dusted off the UN report of April 2003 and is trying to act on its findings, as we have previously taken pains to recommend. But a lot more needs to be done to convince a sceptical public that there will be meaningful, substantial and sustainable reform at the ministry.
Even as Mr Nawbatt prepares to embark on the road to Brasilia, Sir Shridath, the éminence grise of Guyanese diplomacy, has been voicing his “frustration and unhappiness” with the quality of Caribbean diplomacy, lamenting the “slowing down of diplomatic effort deriving from a policy shift at the level of the political directorate of the entire region.”
And while President Jagdeo lambastes the technocrats of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery, it would be interesting to know more about his and the Foreign Minister’s thinking regarding the quality of our own diplomatic representation. We are sure that they would agree on the principle of appointing bright, well-trained and experienced representatives in order to improve our country’s image abroad and secure our strategic interests. The challenge, of course, rests with the implementation of this principle.
