In the period prior to the May 11 general election there was active public speculation as to which functionaries would be appointed to which Cabinet posts, assuming that the then opposition coalition was victorious at the poll. The fact that so many of the leading lights in the coalition lacked any previous ministerial – and in quite a few cases – serious political experience made the automatic attachment of portfolios to personalities difficult, for the most part.
That having been said there appeared to have been a widespread feeling that Mr Carl Greenidge, who had previously served as Finance Minister, would have been restored to that ministry if the coalition came to power. As an aside the point should be made that Mr Greenidge, along with Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo who served as Minister of Information in the earliest PPP/C administration, are the only two members of the present Cabinet with previous ministerial experience, so that the accession of the APNU-AFC coalition to office has witnessed the arrival on the political centre stage of a rash of functionaries inexperienced in the ways of leadership at the highest political levels.
To return to Mr. Greenidge, it would have come as a surprise to many when, rather than being assigned the Finance portfolio he was named Minister of Foreign Affairs. The post of Finance Minister, meanwhile, was assigned to another well-respected technocrat, Mr Winston Jordan.
And yet in naming Mr Greenidge as the country’s Foreign Affairs Minister the new administration might well have been sending a definitive signal to the country as a whole about the direction in which its foreign policy is likely to proceed.
Before addressing that issue, however, the point should be made that in his previous professional incarnations as Guyana’s Finance Minister and subsequently as Senior Director in the Caricom Secretariat’s Office of Trade Negotiations Mr Greenidge would have accumulated a wealth of experience in the spheres of both bilateral and multilateral negotiations with governments on the one hand, and with regional organizations and multilateral financial institutions on the other. In that sense he would be no stranger either to the practices or the protocols associated with conventional diplomacy.
The term economic diplomacy seeks to describe the configuration of a country’s diplomatic effort to place deliberate emphasis on bilateral and multilateral relations that seek to attract resources for economic development. The pursuit of economic diplomacy necessitates, a priori, the recruitment of skills such as those possessed by Mr Greenidge. Those skills have traditionally been lacking in the Foreign Ministry.
While under the previous political administration there was much talk about the need for a greater focus on garnering skills for the more aggressive pursuit of economic diplomacy, the recruitment of those skills never really materialized. Under previous political administrations the diplomatic service served as a haven for the politically favoured, particularly at the higher levels. Not that Guyana has not had a reputation for having produced some fine diplomats, though one wonders about the suitability of many of our ‘old-stagers’ for the rigours of economic diplomacy given the specific skills sets associated with that pursuit. Frankly, Guyana has been far too slow in making the necessary adjustments inside the Foreign Ministry to take account of the primacy of economic diplomacy.
Our speculation is that in naming Mr Greenidge as the country’s Foreign Minister the new political administration is sending a stronger signal than any of its predecessors regarding a serious readiness to place economic diplomacy on its diplomatic front burner.
Of course, it cannot stop there. One expects that over time, the appointment of Mr Greenidge will be complemented by other structural and personnel adjustments in the country’s diplomatic service to ensure that it is better equipped to grasp the nettle of economic diplomacy. Mr Greenidge’s appointment as Foreign Minister is a positive beginning to an anticipated transformation which, presumably, is only just beginning.
