Dear Editor,
Foreign Minister Carl Greenidge may have been inadequately briefed when he made inaccurate statements about me in Kaieteur News (‘Those ambassadorial appointments…’ June 26).
For the record, let me state that I wrote to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 5th June, 2015, indicating that I would be resigning my post in China, and leaving the country very soon thereafter. Mr Greenidge, through the Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, accepted my resignation and thanked me for my service, by way of a letter dated 6th June 2015. Further, I wish to advise that dozens of Monthly Reports were sent by the Guyana Embassy in China, between 2010 and 2015 informing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Government of Guyana of work in progress (the Chinese ferries; the Confucius Institute at UG; the negotiations over the sale of shares in GT&T; the loans and grants for infrastructural work, etc). I would venture to say that China has been Guyana’s largest bilateral lender/investor during the last five years. I am therefore perplexed that Mr Greenidge is not aware of the affairs of the Guyana Embassy in China, especially since I emailed him a Summary Report on 5th June 2015, shortly before departing my post. I can only surmise that he was misquoted by the media. I must also say that I emailed Mr Greenidge on March 22nd this year, offering to meet him on his visit to London in May, to brief him on Guyana-China affairs. It must be noted that he did not reply to me on either correspondence. Although it has been more than a year since leaving China, and no longer working for the Foreign Service, I continue, and will continue, to respond to queries by the Director General on matters pertaining to China (eg May 23rd 2016; 19th June 2016; 21st June 2016). I offered in June 2015 to resume doing pro bono work for Guyana, if so requested, to assist the new government, given that I had accumulated 22 years of diplomatic experience (Member of the Executive Board of UNESCO,1993-1997, then Ambassador to UNESCO 1997-2010, entirely pro bono; Ambassador to China, 2010-2015).
With regard to my direct communications with the former Presidents of Guyana, these were done overwhelmingly through Monthly Reports to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Of course common sense dictated that I shared my perspectives on China, whenever required, with the former Presidents.
I look forward to meeting Mr Greenidge when his time permits; it has been twenty-five years since he gave a lecture at Warwick University, as PNC Minister of Finance, but was discomfitted by the pro-democracy audience of historians and sociologists.
Yours faithfully,
Professor David Dabydeen
Former Ambassador to China
