When PPP central committee member Dr Vindhya Persaud stated her intention go up for election to be that party’s presidential candidate, from my reckoning she received more support from letter writers and commentators than the actual winner of that contest, Mr. Irfaan Ali. She was said to be knowledgeable, principled, reasoned and cultured, not corrupt or racist, and have strong leadership qualities: in other words the right person of the younger generation to take the country into and possibly through the era of oil. Few, if any, questioned her capacity to be president, but then came President David Granger’s appointment of Dr. Karen Cummings, not any less qualified or experienced, as the Minister of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and alarm bells began to ring on all sides. How could this possibly be and what does it say about our understanding of the nature of the MFA, ministerial appointments and the political decision-making process? Now that the appointments resulting from the dual citizen debacle have been made and the dust has settled, I will attempt to add another useful perspective to the discourse.
The concern about Dr. Cummings is usually framed in relation to her capacity to deal with the issues arising from the Venezuelan claim to about 2/3 of Guyana that is at present before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the national and geopolitical ramifications of the political turmoil now engulfing Venezuela, and the need to keep a close eye on the international energy scene in this era of oil, etc. However, this is not the major point of my intervention: after all, the last time I checked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had departments with multi-responsibilities dealing with multilateral and global affairs, American and Asian affairs, frontiers, public diplomacy, etc. All of these should have people from professional (ambassadorial) level downwards versed in their particular area to whom one could turn for advice. Furthermore, there are multiple external sources of advice, some more permanent than others. It goes without saying that the longer one is in the job the more knowledgeable one will become and it will certainly take some time for one to acquire the basic knowledge with which to operate effectively. This should not be a formidable task for one accustomed to the rigour and discipline of learning and application.
However, I juxtaposed the two doctors to suggest another difficulty. In modern times the president/head of government (HOG) is usually the de facto foreign minister and ‘In all states … the influence of the ministry of foreign affairs fluctuates over time, tending to rise or dip for any number of reasons. Among the most important, though, is the personality and level of interest in foreign affairs of the head of government, which is usually great because of the growth of summitry.’ (Berridge, G. R. (2015) Diplomacy: Theory and Practice. Palgrave).
Furthermore, in this era of direct dial diplomacy, almost every ministry and important state institution has important foreign linkages with whom they are routinely in touch. Foreign ministries attempt to stay on top of these relationships through their external diplomatic and consular missions and by vetting all international treaties, requesting that prior notice be given of any proposed official trip abroad, chairing interdepartmental committees with a foreign element, placing their functionaries on other ministerial committees with important foreign interests and so on. But these efforts have not generally been very successful, and in Guyana the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has all but given up trying. In practice what this usually means is that today the ministry is usually only one of many institutions vying for the president’s attention in relation to foreign matters.
Indeed, my experience in Guyana confirms that many a time foreign ministries are bypassed altogether and Lord David Owen, a member of parliament for 26 years and himself a foreign secretary, bemoaned this situation. ‘It will be argued by some that a similar bypassing of the Foreign Secretary and the Foreign Office took place under the Prime Ministership of Margaret Thatcher. I do not think that the Thatcher period came anywhere near as far in undermining the collective handling of foreign policy as the Tony Blair period.’ (https://publications. parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmfaff/665/665vw.pdf).
Given the above, the concerns raised in relation to Dr. Cummings should have been just as, if not more relevantly raised about Dr. Persaud’s attempt at the presidency. This difficulty arose because of the failure to properly locate and appreciate the nature of the political decision-making process. There must be a learning curve but the trick is not to attempt to become a technical specialist but to know what one ought to know to ask the right questions to operate effectively. As stated above this should not be a formidable task for those accustomed to the rigour and discipline of learning and application.
Secondly, a ministerial appointment often seeks an accommodation between optimizing portfolio management and important political objectives. In my view, it happened with Carolyn Rodrigues in 2008 and it is happening now. Once it became clear to the PPP/C that their traditional Indian support base was seriously diminishing, and knowing that winning a significant number of African votes was all but impossible, that party began to make a greater effort to win over the First Peoples by paying greater attention to indigenous issues. The Guyana Action Party led by an Amerindian, Paul Hardy in alliance with the WPA won two seats at the 2001 general elections, but soon left the scene and presented the PPP/C with a glorious opportunity. It began to busy itself with, for example, the First Peoples’ land issue by passing the Amerindian Act in time for the 2006 general elections. It won the support of a well-known Amerindian, the late Dr. Desrey Fox, who was made Minister within the Ministry of Education in the same year. It is usually among the two major parties that the prime ministership is reserved for a person from the other side (African or Indian). The next highest profile position is the foreign ministry and it went to an Amerindian in the form of Carolyn Rodrigues in 2008. What will happen now that another party that focuses upon the First Peoples’ issues is in the next elections race is left to be seen.
Regardless of what other decisions come from the Caribbean Court of Justice, elections are only months away and the president wants to go into those elections with a message that is contrary to how his government is perceived by many persons, namely that it does not care much about the younger generation and is dominated by older military men. The resignation of dual citizen ministers provides him with a great example to argue that when they show themselves, he is prepared to appoint talented people, and particularly women (Foreign Affairs and Minister of State) to the highest offices. What actual authority these new ministers will have is somewhat compromised by the appointments of those who resigned, but never the less, on this issue, the credibility of the coalition going into the next general elections has been enhanced.
