The Donald Ramotar administration yesterday defended the verbal attack on outgoing United States (US) Ambassador Brent Hardt, hailing acting Minister of Foreign Affairs Priya Manickchand’s “feral and fitting blast” to Hardt.
“These things are decided by Cabinet. You believe any minister wakes up a morning and seh ‘Yuh know wuh? I going and get de wuk fuh mek de speech… and I gon decide wuh dis speech gon seh… that don’t happen, that don’t happen no way… the compilation and editing is what gave rise to that speech,” Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr. Roger Luncheon told reporters yesterday.
Luncheon explained that the venue was chosen to deliver government’s message as Hardt would be leaving tomorrow and government did not intend to sit quietly and see Hardt breach sovereignty. “The annual July 4th (reception) presented the ideal opportunity…to deliver a legitimate or feral blast to the US Ambassador,” he said.
Manickchand was jeered and booed during her remarks at a reception hosted at the ambassador’s residence on Wednesday evening to mark the United States’ 238th independence anniversary as well as Hardt’s farewell. Her statements came in wake of the ambassador’s recent public criticism of the excuses given by the Ramotar administration and the president himself for not holding local government elections.
Her actions came in for harsh criticisms by past and present diplomats who said she flouted diplomatic protocol. “When the Minister of Foreign Affairs speaks at a function to mark the departing of an ambassador, it is not a cuss down affair… it is to reflect on his/her works over the period and the areas strengthened between the two nations,” a former diplomat had told Stabroek News.
Luncheon pilloried the opposition and Opposition Leader David Granger, who criticised Manickchand’s actions, saying that they are not taking a national stand with government. “When the US Ambassador is treated by this administration to a fitting response, suddenly others find the strength…their voices announcing, proclaiming, advising against the actions of this administration,” he said.
According to the official, Granger’s response “follows a pattern when it comes to the defence of the sovereignty and defence of this nation.”
Luncheon was adamant that the 4th of July farewell celebrations was the most apt time for the speech. “We don’t have time for that …calling up (the ambassador) and asking ‘Who is your boss?’ and sometime in October you get a response. I spoke of ideal timing,” he asserted.
“Ideal does not mean calling a wrong doer and saying “we did not like what you did. Can you tell us who is your boss so that we could engage him on this behavior?” We don’t have time to have another Commission of Inquiry, not to investigate the actions of the US ambassador… this behavior needed an immediate response. There is no way in the world that government temporise on issues like this,” he stressed.
“Where diplomacy is concerned, there is an immediacy of response – I throw you out of the country, I rebuke you…if the ambassador, for heaven’s sake, did not know that and felt that he could make those remarks and anticipate a civil response and a COI being set up subsequently, well at least one thing, we have disabused his mind,” he added.
Luncheon informed that since substantive Minister of Foreign Affairs Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett was out of the country, cabinet had to choose a fitting replacement who would deliver its message. “Because the Minister of Foreign Affairs was not in Guyana, we said ‘Who shall we bestow the Honour of making this presentation?’… You don’t go to Caesar and try Caesar in Caesar’s court. Minister Manickchand is the messenger… if we were going to send someone there that would be daunted by booing and other signs of disfavor then we sending a weak somebody. Our choices in these matters extend to those considerations. The minister is a warrior in no mean order,” he said.
