Stabroek News columnist Dr Henry Jeffrey says that it appears to him that when former US Ambassador Brent Hardt made a controversial address to the Blue CAPS group he exceeded normative diplomatic behaviour.
Hardt’s address last week Monday, which was reported in last Wednesday’s edition of Stabroek News, triggered later that evening what has now come to be known as the “feral blast” by acting Minister of Foreign Affairs Priya Manickchand.
Writing in today’s Stabroek News, Jeffrey said “It appears to me then that when outgoing US Ambassador Brent Hardt in his speech at a Blue CAPS meeting publicly berated the president and government of Guyana for not implementing local government elections, being inconsistent in their reasoning for not doing so and suggesting that more voices should raise in protest, he went beyond what is acceptable diplomatic behaviour.”
Hardt had gone through all the reasons given by the President and the party for not holding local government elections and dissected them. He had also stated that the President was being inconsistent in his application of the constitution.
Jeffrey, a former Minister of Foreign Trade in the PPP/C government, said that he had no doubt that a large segment of the population believes like Hardt that the government is violating the constitution by not holding local government elections and that more voices need to be raised in protest.
Said Jeffrey: “Yet I doubt that the kind of stance the ambassador took at the Blue CAPS meeting would have gone without reprimand by any government today. Based upon the little understanding I have of these matters, it was way out of line for the ambassador to seek to salve his conscience by publicly berating the president and government for not implementing policies he believes to be in the interest of the people of Guyana! … this is simply not his remit.
“We should not confuse the role of the ambassador with that of his government. My memory tells me that when, under the PNC, the US government wanted to publicly suggest a change in government’s policy, it did not do so through its ambassador. Presidents can send messages; special missions, which may or may not be public about the concerns of their governments, may be dispatched; legislators may be utilized, etc.”
Jeffrey warned that the fact that so many Guyanese believe that the ambassador has a right to make his position on local government elections public should be a wake-up call to the government to put its house in order but it would not.
“Rather than viewing the support the ambassador received for what it really is, namely the increasing frustration being felt in what appears a hopeless political situation, the regime prefers to view these citizens as unpatriotic. Indeed, it sees in this event only another opportunity to use Indian people by defining the justifiable criticisms of its behaviour as racist attacks on Indian women!” he stated
