As was the case in the last two national polls, Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo appears to have taken charge of the PPP’s drive for re-election and is his party’s highest profile campaigner even though not its presidential candidate. Former housing minister Irfaan Ali has been elected for the latter role, and questions which have been raised about his academic credentials apart, he is in other respects, clearly a man in sync with Mr Jagdeo’s own sentiments and style. It all seems to be a reprise of the 2011 and 2015 elections, when Mr Donald Ramotar, another acolyte of Mr Jagdeo’s, was the presidential candidate.
Of course, no one knows yet exactly when the election will be held, since that decision will hinge, in the first instance, on the decision handed down in the no-confidence case to be heard by the Caribbean Court of Justice, but that notwithstanding, all our politicians are behaving as if we are in election mode. As such, there is even more irrationality around than usual and certainly more inappropriate language. In fact, the latter is the Opposition Leader’s speciality, and he uses it at election time in particular, to appeal to the lowest-level ethnic posturings he can identify in the PPP constituency. The aim is, as always, to ensure that that constituency does not break ranks, but votes solidly for the party at the ballot box. It is a tactic which is both cynical and irresponsible, but then with some exceptions, Guyanese politicians on all sides have been demonstrating their cynicism and irresponsibility for nothing short of 50 years. It is just that Mr Jagdeo is more blatant and more vulgar than most of his political cohorts.
The Opposition Leader invariably kicks off his pre-election campaign of vilification of his opponents and the press at the memorial event for Dr Cheddi Jagan in March at Babu Jaan, an occasion, one might have thought, which demanded rather less crassness and ethnic fomentation than he is wont to display. This year was no exception, and we had reported him as telling the audience, “Here in Berbice and right across Guyana, when the ministers or [President David] Granger or [Prime Minister Moses] Nagamootoo come here after the 21st of March, you say to them, walk behind them, chase them out.”
It certainly says nothing for Mr Jagdeo’s democratic credentials if he seriously believes that it is acceptable to encourage his supporters to chase senior coalition figures out of their area, rather than advise them to listen to what they have to say, and ask pertinent questions. If that is what he is prepared to maintain, then he is in no position to criticise the government on democratic grounds, let alone promote the PPP’s commitment to democracy.
That said, it was hardly the best of wisdom for the government, on its part, to send the police to interview Mr Jagdeo about what he had said, however inappropriate it might have been and particularly when it was so long after the event. This invites retaliation, which Mr Anil Nandlall has promised, whereby the PPP will now comb through all the untoward statements which government ministers and others have made − and goodness knows, there are enough of those to go around. In other words, it takes us into tit-for-tat territory which does nothing but raise the tensions in the society, and which everyone, except some of the major politicians, it would seem, could do without. But then as suggested earlier, Mr Jagdeo and other politicians have shown in the past that heightening tensions is not an issue provided it ensures their constituents go out and vote for them.
But language was not the only avenue by which Mr Jagdeo made a foray into the news pages last week. On Thursday, we reported him as telling the media that the PPP had hired a US-based public relations firm at a cost of $34 million to represent its case in Washington DC. The firm would not be concerned with campaign related issues, he said, but would ensure that the party’s views were heard by US policymakers at every level. The money to pay it derived from both local and overseas supporters.
The company concerned, Mercury Public Affairs, was expected to get the message of free and fair elections out to Washington, and, Mr Jagdeo asserted, “We are doing this for Guyana.” We went on to quote him as saying: “[W]e badly needed a presence in Washington because a lot of the opinions formed in Washington from many organisations, including the multilateral financial institutions, the OAS and of course the US government, could be tainted by the lies that APNU has been telling in these areas…so we have to have a presence there so that we can have access to those bodies so that we can bring a balance to what is being peddled in those circles.”
Leaving aside for the moment the substantive issue of why the PPP finds it necessary to pay a Washington PR company at all, there is the matter of whom they have hired. Mercury was one of the lobbying firms which worked with Paul Manafort, the one-time chair for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and his partner Rick Gates, both of whom did work for the Ukrainian government. Under the US Foreign Agents Registration Act, they should have registered with the Justice Department, and Manafort subsequently went on trial for not doing so. Their lobbyists, one of which was Mercury, should also have registered, but did not do so until much later.
Given Mercury’s recent history, one can only wonder what persuaded Mr Jagdeo to settle on this firm, as opposed to any number of others, which have a less uncertain reputation. “We’re very happy with the firm. We’re happy with its credentials. We’re happy that the firm is a bi-partisan firm…” was his less than enlightening response to reporters. So while he is supposedly concerned about APNU’s “lies”, he is unconcerned about the faults of an American company to which a large sum has to be paid. At a minimum, it says nothing for his consistency where ethical judgements in the public arena are concerned.
But $34 million is a very substantial sum of money, and the public must be wondering why it is so critical that this be spent on an American lobbying firm rather than on the poorest among the PPP’s own constituents, to give one possible alternative. After all, the US has an embassy here which watches events and listens to everyone, and then feeds its analyses back to the State Department. Why is it, everyone must be asking, that Freedom House feels it so necessary to leapfrog over official US representation here?
One possibility is that the key lies in Mr Jagdeo’s phrase “free and fair elections.” Despite their best efforts, the party failed to persuade anyone, including Washington, that the 2015 election was rigged. They refused to believe they had lost it, and did not appear to accept that if a large number of independent observers, many of whom they themselves had invited, deemed the poll free and fair, then it was free and fair and the world would accept it as such.
Could it be that by implication, they are now of the view they did themselves unnecessary damage with Washington when, in defiance of common courtesy and standard diplomatic protocol, they sent Ms Priya Manickchand to insult a departing US ambassador at a reception? Do they perversely believe that had that not happened, the Americans would have given them a more sympathetic hearing in 2015? If so, they are dreaming. Certainly, anyone listening to the Opposition Leader’s remarks must have been tempted to the view that the PPP wishes to revert the discussion to its old-time parameters, in which the PNC plays the role of being associated with fraudulent elections, and the opposition party is the victim.
In fairness, however, with all its stratagems and its control of GECOM, APNU has given the electorate cause for unease about its intentions where elections are concerned, more particularly about delaying them for as long as possible. However, there is little doubt that those developments are monitored by the western embassies locally, including the Americans. It would hardly be necessary, in such circumstances, one might have thought, to contract a US PR firm to keep Washington sensitised to what is going on.
Whatever else the PPP has in mind, the possibility remains that one of its motives at least, although not the only one, is to use lobbying to restore what it thinks might be its damaged standing in Washington dating back to the infamous insult.
