Minister Manickchand’s tawdry behaviour at a reception marking American Independence Day that was also intended as a farewell function for outgoing US Ambassador Brent Hardt was not, it seems, simply a reflection of her own social limitations. Had it been so, then one would have merely decried President Donald Ramotar’s impolitic choice for acting Foreign Minister, which was a mistake he surely would have been disinclined to repeat. But as we reported yesterday, it seems that this was not the case; it was all planned in advance, so that what we are dealing with is not just an acting Foreign Minister who is a stranger to the most commonplace of diplomatic protocols, but a government which believes that boorishness and churlishness are appropriate substitutes for courtesy and politesse.
What emerged from Ms Manickchand’s unprecedented harangue to the Ambassador and his assembled guests last Wednesday, was perhaps the fact that the government appears to be feeling the pressure of the many calls for the holding of local government elections, with which Ambassador Hardt – along with some other diplomats it might be noted – has been associated. This the administration regards as ‘meddling’ in the affairs of a sovereign Guyana. How-ever, what seems to have really sent the Cabinet and no doubt the ruling party as a whole over the edge, was the US representative’s remarks at the closing ceremony of a Blue Caps training programme on Monday, that Ms Manickchand described as “justifying insurrection.”
On that occasion we reported Mr Hardt as restating the case for the holding of local government polls, and dismissing the plethora of excuses from President Ramotar and the ruling party for not holding them. An infuriated acting Minister, speaking for an infuriated government was quoted as saying: “For a professional foreign [service] officer… to make such declarations, accusations, allegations and innuendos about the executive President of Guyana… is to our mind totally unacceptable.”
She was also consumed by the fact that the audience which the Ambassador was addressing represented “a collection of young minds,” whom, by implication, she considered he was leading astray. Furthermore, Mr Hardt’s invocation of the name of Dr Cheddi Jagan seems to have produced great indignation on the government side.
In a limp defence of her government’s default on the matter of local government elections, Ms Maninckchand said: “We will agree that democracy and the rule of law is not only about local government elections, which I am confident that Guyanese people will resolve in the very near future, [but] it must be practised by all who choose to preach it at all times.”
The first thing to be observed is that if calling for local polls and dismissing President Ramotar’s excuses for not doing so qualify as “justifying insurrection,” then either the government does not know what the word ‘insurrection’ means, or it lacks the credentials to be called democratic. Secondly, if the Government of Guyana seriously believes that young minds have to be insulated from calls for greater democracy, whatever their source, then they have a very low opinion of the capacity of the younger generation to exercise judgement, think for themselves, and notice when the actions of an administration (or lack of them in this case) are abrogating their democratic rights.
Thirdly, her statement that the Guyanese people will resolve the matter of local government elections in the very near future is utter nonsense. She well knows and her government does too that it is the latter which will decide the date of local polls, not the people of Guyana, who are the ones calling for them, because they have no power to do anything else.
And then there is the matter of the PPP’s founder leader, Dr Cheddi Jagan. That reference by the Ambassador would naturally have caused Freedom House to shake to its foundations with fury. It is part of the PPP’s received history, of course, that the US played a role in the 1960s in bringing down the Jagan government, and setting the stage for what eventually would become Burnham’s undemocratic government from 1968 onwards. For a US representative, therefore, to suggest the government was deviating from Jagan’s principles would make them splenetic.
But there is something else rather significant that was pointed out by more than one correspondent to the letter columns of this newspaper, and that is that Dr Jagan spent decades encouraging all kinds of nations in the western world to ‘meddle’ in the affairs of this country so free and fair elections would be held when the PNC was in power. In the end (after 1989), a sitting US President and members of the US government ‘meddled’ and a former US President ‘meddled’ even more, also monitoring the 1992 elections. That ‘meddling’ was warmly welcomed by the PPP and, it might be noted, warmly remembered too – at least, up until recently.
Of course, the acting Minister flailed about seeking examples of how undemocratic the US was (it is certainly not perfect, but it holds more than a few lessons for Guyana), seizing on such false analogies as the UN Security Council. One is tempted to ask Ms Manickchand whether she thinks that China would be happy with a democratic Security Council.
The substance of what she had to say is one thing, however, but the occasion selected for delivering her fulminations is quite another. The conventions of diplomacy have evolved over a long time span, and emphasise public civility and respect. When it is considered a reproach has to be delivered, this is normally done in private. If a reproof or disagreement is to be conveyed in a public context, then the language is carefully formulated with the use of code words which are understood by all.
In an example yesterday involving a member of the German intelligence agency who was arrested on suspicion of spying for the Americans, it was reported that the US Ambassador had been summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin. Everyone knows what that means. Everyone, except the PPP/C, it seems, which apparently has never heard of it, and did not ‘summon’ the US envoy for a private dressing down after the Blue Caps remarks, although rightly or wrongly it perceived itself as offended.
Apart from the diplomatic faux pas, there is, as suggested above, the matter of common or garden bad manners. It was a farewell gathering, when benign platitudes are in order, and it was also an occasion for celebrating American Independence when sour notes are definitely not in order. Is the government truly so ignorant about the ordinary courtesies of life? One can only surmise that it feels that the outside world works in exactly the same way as the one it has created around itself, and that it can bully foreign diplomats as it does Guyanese. In that way, it hopes, they will think twice about pressing for local government elections and take some of the heat off. It should not hold its breath.
There is something else too. Could this immoderate reaction not also reflect the contradiction the members of the PPP are being forced to confront in their own thinking, when free and fair elections have always formed the core of their self image? Now they find themselves in the invidious position of defending why there shouldn’t be free and fair local government elections twenty years after the last such polls. Instead of addressing the root of their internal conflict, however, they deflect their unease by lashing out at Ambassador Hardt.
And so in defiance of diplomatic protocol and in defiance of common courtesy the “warrior” acting Minister Manickchand was sent into the fray to deliver what Dr Luncheon called a “feral…blast” (what a wonderful description). In the meantime Guyanese are left to ponder what kind of an ill-informed government they really have.
