Sometimes you must say it as it is. The acting Foreign Minister of Guyana, Ms. Priya Manickchand, said it as it was.
She did not engage in meaningless diplomatic platitudes. She did not feign pretence that everything was hunky-dory between the government and the US Ambassador. She was candid and unpretentious. She called a spade a spade.
She put the Ambassador in his place. In fact, given his inconsiderate and disrespectful remarks, he more than deserved the mouthful that he got. Perhaps a little more sophistication could have been employed. But he had to be told how the government felt about the role he has played and his continued undiplomatic remarks about affairs in Guyana.
I have said before that the US Ambassador was very fortunate to still have been in Guyana. In most other countries in Latin America, any US leader having the temerity to indicate that his government will go ahead with a project despite the objections of the sovereign government of the day would have long been kicked out.
There is no reason why any self-respecting government should have allowed a US Ambassador to have been a guest of its country after the brazen announcement that a project, not sanctioned by the government, would have gone ahead.
It is not clear if his tenure had naturally come to an end, or if it was the controversy over the project that led to his recall after the Guyana government would have lodged a Letter of Protest. The US administration does not usually publicly chastise their representatives, but surely the US State Department must have examined the Guyana Government’s complaint and acted both publicly and privately on the matter.
But I do recall a senior US official in the 1970’s indicating to Forbes Burnham that it was Burnham’s diatribes against the United States, following the downing of the Cubana airliner that had earned the official’s recall to Washington.
In spite of the two sides mending fences on the matter of the democracy project, the US Ambassador continued with his undiplomatic ranting.
He ought to have known that it was beyond the norm for him to have publicly criticized a sitting Head of State in the manner that he did. He could have made the same point that he was attempting to make, by simply indicating that the Constitution of Guyana requires the holding of local government elections and the US government supports such democratic practices.
To have injected the President’s name into the discourse and to have accused him of being inconsistent was a clear case of him being misadvised and also acting undiplomatically. In so doing he crossed the proverbial line between acting in his country’s interest and meddling in the internal affairs of the country.
I observe that some persons in our society are rushing to the Ambassador’s defence after the dressing down that he justly received from the acting Foreign Minister. But let us be fair, I did not hear these same individuals indicate that he was out of place and undiplomatic when he made those remarks about our President. So why then should they be criticizing the acting Foreign Minister for being undiplomatic?
Even if they agreed with the criticisms of the Ambassador, they should acknowledge that it was not his role to be saying those things that he said and they should have reprimanded him for so doing.
I am also disgusted by some of the reports about the booing and heckling of the Minister. That these things happened must be reported, but many of the reporters were gleeful in reporting that the minister was at the receiving end of heckling and hisses at a reception to mark American Independence.
There have been suggestions that if the acting Minister had something to say, she should have picked a better occasion. Well, she must have felt strongly about what was said by the Ambassador and felt the need to respond immediately. Any self-respecting government would have done the same. These things had to be said. The Minister chose to say them at the reception. There will remain those who will feel that another occasion may have been more suitable, but I would not deny that a response such as what the Minister made had to have been made by a self –respecting government.
The Ambassador spoke his mind and the Minister spoke hers. That is democracy is it not? Or is it okay for a foreign power to say what they like in our backyard and we must stay quiet and not respond? I think not!