Is President Jagdeo an elected dictator?
Freddie Kissoon Column
Kaieteur News
February 15, 2007

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I always remember something about Minister Henry Jeffrey. It is something you should never forget after you read the lines to follow below. It is something that lies at the heart of human behaviour – we are selfish people.

Minister Jeffrey's wife, attorney, Ms. Josephine Whitehead, once worked as a colleague of mine in the Department of Political Science and Law at the University of Guyana.

Speaking about politics with me one day on the upper level of the building that houses the Faculty of Social Sciences, she said the straw that broke the camel's back for her husband during his sojourn with the PNC Government was the banning of wheaten flour.

That was either in 1988 or 1989; I can't remember. I wasn't mellow then as I am now, so I yelled out to her that it was a stupid action on the part of her husband. Why the banning of wheaten flour when that pales in significance to the semi-fascist things Burnham did like the assassination of Walter Rodney.

Though Minister Jeffrey was honest in the way he felt, it showed the nature of Homo sapiens. We arrive at values depending on what they do for us and not their objective place in the scheme of things. Values then have no objective importance only when they the serve purposes we want them to have.

For Minister Jeffrey, Walter Rodney was not of his ideological persuasion. Maybe he didn't think highly of Rodney at all. Minister Jeffrey probably loved his bread with such a passion that when Burnham banned it, he felt Burnham had intruded in his personal life. But surely, there has to be universal recognition of some values that civilized people must hold dear. The murder of Rodney was an unforgivable sin on the part of Forbes Burnham. Dr. Jeffrey should have broken with the PNC after that despicableness.

So we have Mr. Clairmont Lye who has joined Rickey Singh as the latest bunch of self-centered persons who suddenly discovered common sense. We have dealt with Singh before in this column last week. The least said of him the better.

Let's analyse the latest Christopher Columbus of Guyana – Clairmont Lye.

Mr. Lye has returned his national award (CCH) to the Office of the President citing what he termed governmental excesses over the years and the straw that broke the camel's back was the withdrawal of ads from Stabroek News.

Mr. Lye can seek to deceive whoever he wants to. If they are stupid enough to want to be blindly led by Mr. Lye then that is there business, not mine.

Guyana is a small society. Everyone knows everyone's business. Mr. Lye was no doubt asked to denounce the unpopular decision to withdraw the ads. Because of his long association with Mr. David De Caires, he felt obliged. One of course should not doubt Mr. Lye's genuine sadness over what has happened to Stabroek. But where was the voice of Mr. Lye the past fifteen years?

Let us say he didn't see any wrong committed by Dr. and Mrs. Jagan. But Jagdeo has been in power over seven years. He said that he was moved by two factors – excesses over the years and the placement decision. But he only acted after the advertisement controversy calling into question his sincerity about what he has been disgusted with over the years.

There were so many naked excesses that we should have heard the voice of Mr. Lye a long time ago. Which country has Mr. Lye been living in the past seven years?

So much has been written about Mr. Jagdeo's suspected Burnhamite tendencies that Mr. Lye should have opened up his eyes long before he did this week. But Mr. Lye's position reminds us of the story Minister Henry Jeffrey's wife spoke to me about. The withdrawal decision may have so personally affected Mr. Lye that he felt he could not stay silent any longer. We are to presume then that it was only when it hit home, Mr. Lye had the common sense, and courage to do what he has just done.

What the people of this country need to comprehend and do so quickly is that the silence of persons like Clairmont Lye and Rickey Singh and so many others have led us to where we are now – questioning whether Mr. Jagdeo is not an elected dictator.

The episodes were countless, yet Rickey Singh persevered and supported an elected dictatorship and Lye was nowhere to be found. This same Lye and Singh would not have remained reticent if for six consecutive years Presidents Forbes Burnham and Desmond Hoyte had unilaterally raised salary increases by only five percent.

For me we had entered the gates of elected dictatorship since Jagan died in 1997 but the watershed year was 2005.

I wrote so much about a particular incident in August of that year that I literally begged Guyanese to open their eyes. For me, it remains the largest symbol of the arrogance, pomposity and dictatorial character of President Jagdeo.

In any analysis of the nature of elected dictatorship in Guyana, the August 2005 incident must figure prominently. It is a priceless piece of information with which one can use to assess the political make-up of our President.

Now, it must be remembered that all governments put their favourite people in particular positions within the state. But certain lines must not be crossed.

It was a gargantuan sign of dreadful moments to come in the rule of Bharrat Jagdeo when he returned from New York in August 26 and the same day made a decision that led to a cabinet meeting the next day, August 27.

President Jagdeo was told that his own party colleagues on the Council of the University had voted to advertise for the position of Vice-Chancellor of the University.Cabinet reversed that arrangement, sacked the acting Vice-Chancellor and installed the fired Vice-Chancellor that the Council had lost faith in, even though the people involved in that circumstance were die-hard PPP leaders. Their only crime was that they had the University at heart.

What was most diabolical about this August 2005 incident was that it was an identical repeat of what took place in 2000. The same Vice-Chancellor was turned down and a decision made to advertise for the position. The Council was ordered to reverse the new mandate. In the process, the Pro-Chancellor, Dr. Josh Ramsammy was sacked. Both Rickey Singh and Clairmont Lye know Dr. Ramsammy very well. But they never raised a voice in support of Dr. Ramsammy. Neither did Stabroek News, a newspaper that certainly is no professional example of press freedom. The withdrawal edict is wrong but Stabroek's hypocrisy has caught up with it.