More than any other president who has served in this country, President David Granger appears to have a penchant for renaming things. Even without taking historical issues into consideration, in a fractious society like this one renaming institutions and buildings has to be approached with caution, and no government should be tempted to make too much of a habit of it.
The last government was not without its flaws on this front, although in fairness they were few and far between. By far its biggest mistake – and it was a major one – was the renaming of Timehri airport, the Cheddi Jagan International (CJIA). This change would have received a great deal more active opposition had it not been for the fact that the decision was made during the tide of emotion which flowed over the nation immediately following Dr Jagan’s death in 1997 before the funeral took place. Public opposition was therefore muted out of respect for the dead, although a vigorous debate did take place subsequently in the Parliament, but by then it was too late.
As it was, so little homework was done in relation to the name change that the Prime Minister thought it could be accomplished by a government order, which he then had to withdraw when it was discovered that the name ‘Timehri’ had been decreed by Act of Parliament and could only be altered by the passage of an amendment. The governing party was unconcerned that this was a name which had had public input, and with which all the political parties had been in accord. The airport by virtue of its appellation was also the one major institution in this country which honoured the Indigenous people.
In a new baptism, the nation’s largest international airport was then conferred with the name of the leader of one of the two major political parties, and that name passed into law courtesy of a PPP/C majority in the National Assembly, not a unanimous vote. Whatever else this rushed process reflected, it was not political unity or consultation with the public, least of all with the Amerindians. And this is not to say either that Dr Jagan did not deserve to be honoured; it is merely to observe that there were other possibilities by which this could have been achieved.
Two decades on, and attention shifts to this country’s other international airport, albeit an infinitely smaller one. On September 19 last year, President Granger indicated that he would like Ogle to be known in future as the E F Correia International Airport, and near the end of that month, according to Ogle Airport Inc (OAI), the shareholders were written on the matter, and only Air Services Ltd objected to the name-change. In a press release OAI went on to say that subsequently its Board unanimously approved the change, but that when the process was initiated to implement it, Air Services Ltd, Jags Aviation Ltd and Hinterland Aviation wrote indicating withdrawal of their support for the name change.
Whatever the sequence of events, the position now is that the National Air Transport Association (NATA) which represents the smaller operators at Ogle, having lost a court case to try and block the renaming, now intends to appeal, and if necessary may take the case as far as the Caribbean Court of Justice. Among their objections to the change is the fact that E F Correia was related to the members of the Correia Group which in their words “dominates” the management of the airport. So to have the Correia name attached to the airport, they feel, “would give the Correia Group a distinct advantage over the other operators with whom they are competing for business.”
The President, perhaps displaying the impatience of a military man who is accustomed to quick decisions, gave a rare show of public irritability by calling those opposed to the renaming “small minded” and “petty.” In an interview last weekend he expressed himself as “disappointed” that “they would put personality in front of nationality.” It seems from what he went on to say he was suggesting that they were placing personal interests in front of the national interest, an unfortunate accusation in this instance where the national interest is not as clear cut as he seems persuaded that it is.
E F Correia, a political figure of the 1950s and ̓60s, is simply not known to the public at large, and it was President Granger himself who supplied the information that he had been a minister responsible for aviation and had made an important contribution to the development of aviation in this country. Last weekend he said: “It is my view that in the national interest that the airport be named after a son of the soil who has done a lot for Guyana.”
It was Captain Gerry Gouveia of Roraima Airways who in a letter to this newspaper published on Friday challenged the authorities to produce evidence that E F Correia was worthy of having the airport named after him; and that he had been a professional aviator and had contributed in a significant manner to aviation development and/or national development. In the case of someone who is virtually unknown nowadays in the public arena, these are far from irrelevant questions.
To some extent Capt Gouveia had been pre-empted by Mr Kamal Ramkarran who in a letter to SN last year drew attention to the fact that E F Correia was not this country’s first minister of aviation, in addition to which he was one of the Governor’s appointees to the Legislative Council after the suspension of the constitution in 1953. Whether in spite of this background his accomplishments are such to still qualify him to have an airport named after him is yet to be demonstrated.
As we reported on Thursday, it was Minister David Patterson who introduced a new element into the debate, namely, that the renaming was “to recognize a Guyanese of Portuguese descent,” and that the government had renamed the Arthur Chung Convention Centre “to recognize a noteworthy person of Chinese descent.” He went on to remark that “we can’t just restrict our identification to the persons that we know – Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham…”
This is an entirely novel intervention in the discussion. Are we to understand that President Granger wanted to find an ethnic Portuguese to honour, representing another of the peoples who came, and so cast around for someone who had a connection with aviation? If so, then he is surely going the wrong way about things. There are certainly Portuguese from the past who deserve to be honoured, perhaps E F Correia among them, but not necessarily in connection with the airport.
In a letter published in this newspaper today, Mr Christopher Ram draws attention to Article 24 of the Lease Agreement between the government and OIA as it relates to renaming, and says that the process requires that the operator submit any suggested name to the Ministry for approval, which approval can be withheld for any reason. Prima facie, at least, it would not appear that this procedure has been followed.
That said, however, in this day and age, and given the fiasco of the CJIA, even before the operator submits its suggestion to the Minister, there should be widespread discussion on the proposal involving the public which after all uses the airport, as well as the various stakeholders. The President clearly thought that enough had been done when the idea was put to the shareholders and Board, and there was no major objection at that stage. That is not good enough. People often take time before they are conscious of all the pros and cons of an issue, more particularly in relation to the name of someone whom they know nothing about. The GDF no doubt operates with greater dispatch, but civilian processes can be long-winded if not disagreeable at times. However, criticism of the President’s proposal does not mean that the critics are not functioning in the national interest; on the contrary, a healthy debate is what democracy is all about.
At this point with litigation still looming on the horizon, it would pay the government to suspend for the time being, the renaming exercise scheduled for tomorrow, and in the meantime make out a case why the airport needs renaming in the first place, and then give the populus some biodata on E F Correia, putting up arguments for why he deserves to have the airport named after him. Let there be a flourishing discussion, and let the Ministry of the Presidency resist the temptation to steamroll ahead over the objections of possibly a large number of people.
