It's difficult to pass judgement on a tethered president
Cassandra's Candid Corner
Everybody and he uncle getting into de act of assessing Mr Jagdeo's performance during his first year in office, and since goat ent bite me, I gun offah my small piece. Well, for starters, we must understand that politicians are politicians. They are the same the world over. I have never encountered a truthful one or one that does not manipulate people. As some wise man (probably a Guyanese) once said: Politics is Politricks. That's a given. I am convinced that the flotsam and jetsam of humanity instinctively migrate towards that profession (you see how many lawyers, who exist on their wits and words, go into politics), irrespective of what noble goals they tell themselves (and us) they wish to achieve. No politician is a Mahatma and the Mahatma was not a politician. I am certain that there must be a certain pathopsychology associated with those who aspire to politics as a profession. I know that I have put it in writing to my spouse that any time, in a moment of insanity, I even tend to think about entering the political arena, she has my permission to take the biggest two-by-four and bring me back to the straight and narrow. Am I bitter? Not really, but I have been disappointed in every single politician whom I have met and became close to - all over the world. Perhaps I just wanted paragons of virtue to be my leaders and never recognised Milton's truism (in Areopagitica) that politics is the "fore't and outward union of cold and neutral and inwardly divided minds". Well, there's the pathopsychology right there. But where was I? Ah, Yes, I wanted to share my two bits worth of assessment of the President's first year. The young man began his term facing licks like peas, and the pressures never subsided. The Armstrong award hit him in the first week and he has had to deal with the floods, and Suriname and Venezuela, and a Cabinet that is not fully protagonist to his person or his views. Yet, he has emerged, though not, unscathed and smelling of roses, surely wiser and stronger. He goes around the country doing and saying the right things and sharing out our, not his as the headlines state, money like confetti. There is no doubt that he is popular with the youth. He does not come across as being avuncular (after all he is one of them) and patronising. In fact, like a true politician, he gives the impression of being genuine in his desire to solve problems, not lastly those that impact upon the now generation. He engages and involves them in discussion like no one ever in the history of Guyanese politics. And he continues to trumpet his success in debt relief - even as he borrows more money. He has novel ideas but can't implement them because, as he recognises, he doesn't really have a mandate; and there are those around him that never allow him to forget that. Therein lie his "failures". Since he can't get rid of the deadwood (especially not now as we approach elections), the ministries, in many instances, are being managed by the same old dunderheads, and are virtually on auto-pilot (especially now that the primary focus is elections and re-election). I suppose his current greatest asset is to be found in the nexus between his energy and visibility. Dr Jagan was irrepressible and indefatigable. This young man must have been programmed by Cheddi. Weekdays and weekends he is on the move. Early in the morning he may be in one place, by mid-morning he is elsewhere and by the afternoon he is in a totally other part of the country talking the talk. Yes, no doubt he has the energy of youth; but I don't get the impression that he is driven and fixated with the need to accomplish, as Cheddi was. In the final analysis, I suppose it is difficult, even unwise, to pass a meaningful judgement on a tethered, unelected President. His job in the next five months is to win over a significant portion of that 58 per cent (according to the NACTA poll) which does not support the PPP. Will his team rally around him to make that inroad? If the PPP loses, then members of the present team will lose their jobs; if the PPP wins and Bharrat gets his mandate, then many of them might get fired. With that sword of Damocles hanging over them will they fully support the young President? * So, Moses is demitting office. What's he going to study? Law? It figures. One of these days, over a beer, he'll tell me why he didn't study during the 28 years in the political doghouse. You see Corbin? As soon as he entered the breadline, he immediately began studying and getting a real profession. What? Law? Quod erat demonsrandum. Back to Corbin. I see he is a front runner in the Hoyte successor race. I don't know much about Mr Alexander. Vincent Alexander might be a philosopher; definitely he likes to intellectualise issues. Robert Corbin, I know. I would imagine that he would be Mr Hoyte's choice. After all, he is a proven and tested comrade. And the party owes him great debts. Moreso, he is shrewd and analytical and practical. This is a man with immense intellectual depth. On his good side - he is a farmer. In the excerpt from the NACTA poll, (SN,23.8.00) documented Table 4 which advised us that the most important problems facing the nation, as seen by the electorate, were race, crime, drugs, corruption, unemployment and poverty. EDUCATION (or the lack thereof) did not figure as a problem. What, an uneducated nation? * Double A Fenty keeps asking who the Guyana Ambassador to Suriname is and what he looks like. Well, dear friend, turn to page 16 of SN, 22.8.00. There you'll see the big strappin' fellah. But he still invisible, though.
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