Dear Editor,
NACTA’s recent poll survey conducted in July claimed 59% of Guyanese approving of President Jagdeo’s performance while expressing strong disapproval for the rest of his government. 36% of Guyanese allegedly approve of the government’s performance. I really do not know how to treat NACTA polls with respect to integrity but I will accept the results for the purpose of this letter. So Guyanese love the President but dislike his government. In the minds of Guyanese there has to be some massive gulf of separation between the President and his government. It is the only way this 59% approval of Mr Jagdeo would make any sense. In the minds of Guyanese, the President must play no part in choosing and selecting his government. He has no great powers under the 1980 constitution that Burnham gifted him. He plays no part in handpicking ministers. He plays no part in overseeing their performance. He has never changed them when dissatisfied with their performance. That really has to be the case to explain this finding claimed by NACTA and this opinion of this nation of 750,000 people.
The most critical part of leadership is choosing a team and delegation. Maybe Guyanese have not noticed but the President’s choices have generally been poor. There is a palpable lack of management skills, leadership, decision-making, efficiency, moral clarity and rectitude, waste elimination and anti-corruption vigour in most of the President’s choices. As one blogger appropriately said, “He choice box bare.” So what happens in other democracies when a President’s choice box is bare. The people see the President properly as a flawed leader. The leader is then thrown out of office along with his cronies. It is the way democracy works. It is the way the mindset of people groomed in the true process of democracy think. Now, the leader of Guyana has the use of a powerful constitution that grants him enormous power to do what he wants to. That leader has the power to make changes to people and systems in a manner that leaders of other democracies do not. Yet, despite all of this power gifted to him by a constitutional legacy the leader continues to select wrongly and make wrong decisions that affect people’s lives. But Guyanese apparently do not see this dilemma this way. They see the leader as untouchable and approve of him. This is why they are getting exactly what they wanted.
When they approve of a leader who approves of flawed men to run their lives they deserve their fate. What right do they now have to question the President already clothed in untouchable powers when they approve of him, and he has the sole right to choose any government he wishes? By approving the President in a landslide they have approved all of his decision-making, good or bad. And the President has made some terrible choices in selecting men to govern. This has to be an inherent flaw in the genetic coding of the Guyanese people. Maybe it is the same approbation that allowed Forbes Burnham to lay waste this nation. Maybe Guyanese secretly love dictators and quasi-dictators and all-powerful Presidents. Maybe the years of deprivation of good leadership have blinded people. Maybe this is why we choose flight rather than fight in our entire existence as a nation. Maybe we are plain dumb to see that if we give so much power to one man and he can pick whom he wants and we massively approve of him he will continue picking for us and picking wrong while at it. In the West or even in the nations of our Caribbean neighbours, if there is disapproval of a government, there is disapproval of the leader. For they see clearly that it starts from the top and must fall from the top. I wonder if President Jagdeo takes this approval as the call of the Guyanese people for him to have that wonderful gift of a third term which will allow him to give them a new set of incompetents. The President should go ahead and make their day. While he is at it, he should consider fourth and fifth terms. And run the entire nation himself. He apparently does not need a government.
Yours faithfully,
Michael Maxwell
