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Mar 06, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
In his address to the police conference on Thursday, President Bharrat Jagdeo told his audience that he knows his “shoot to kill” advice to the police will bring a reaction from Kaieteur News and from Freddie Kissoon, but he has no time for these fools. Leave me out of the discussion and let us look at Kaieteur News.
Mr. Jagdeo openly told a business dinner attended by the major investors in Guyana that they must stop advertising in this newspaper. Now, he has referred to Kaieteur News as a fool.
Isn’t Mr. Jagdeo admitting he is a failure? Business people continue to put their placements on the pages of this newspaper. The scientific fact stares Mr. Jagdeo in his face. He was rejected. Surely, this cannot be political success. It is nothing but pure failure.
One assumes that tomorrow Mr. Jagdeo’s advisor, Prem Misir, is going to be in hot water. He attempted to become a columnist in this newspaper. Then he wanted his letters to be published only in the Sunday edition. And he continues to submit letters for publication in the Kaieteur News.
For the week gone, he had four missives. When a President can urge the investment community to boycott a newspaper and they ignore him, can castigate that press as a fool but his advisors (Randy Persaud, Prem Misir etc) continue to seek space in the newspaper then that President is a failure.
If Kaieteur News and Freddie Kissoon are fools then something is wrong with the Guyanese nation, because we are read extensively. Or is it that nothing is wrong with us but the problem is with certain other people. President Jagdeo’s fundamental weakness which he has never been able to surmount (and he leaves office with that scar) is his tragic inability to define what the presidency of a nation entails.
He never understood that. For this reason he will leave without any conceivable form of legacy and the historians will make mincemeat out of him.
Presidents don’t tell their police officers that they must shoot to kill. They may want them to do that and they will urge them in that direction using subtle and diplomatic language. You call it leadership qualities. If a human being doesn’t have leadership qualities he will not succeed in leading. This explains why his boycott advocacy was ignored.
He couldn’t persuade the business community to cease its relationship with the Kaieteur News because he was an ineffective leader.
Compare Desmond Hoyte’s insistence that people must boycott the Chronicle. It succeeded. PNC constituencies throughout Guyana heeded Hoyte’s suggestion.
One of the nine leadership qualities (don’t have space to discuss the other eight) is called, “situational sensitivity.” To make a long story short, it is the keen ability of a leader to shape policy and behaviour to suit a particular circumstance. It involves the tactic of knowing when not to advance because the situation at the time is too delicate.
Here is an example. The Americans have allowed Castro to remain in power for fifty years because successive American Presidents have used crude rhetoric which Castro has manipulated to his domestic advantage. He tells the Cuban people that the gringos want to drive them into the ground. Obama has avoided that pitfall.
Another example is how the Americans react to rebellions in the Middle East. You don’t want to give the dictator the opportunity to tell his army that the Americans are planning to use military power. It is the trump card of the dictator.
A very good use of the characteristic of “situational sensitivity” is the apology. When circumstances do not favour a leader, the atmosphere in the country is tense, and the volatility of the situation is threatening, a simple apology can diffuse tensions. Sarkozy in France, in addressing the nation after one year in power, apologized for all the mistakes he made. President Jagdeo leaves in a few months’ time and in his twelve years as President never issued an apology for some of the most egregious mistakes.
One thought he would have done that when he was unjustified in his rebuke of Mr. Yesu Persaud on the tax concession to the Ramroop group of companies. At a time when national respect for the police force is low (the torture case was a horrible display), President Jagdeo urges them to shoot to kill.
Finally, Mr. Jagdeo has been unable in his career to detect when applause is robotic from when it is emotionally genuine. Some leaders are great. Some try. Some fail. Mr. Jagdeo didn’t succeed.
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
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