A diplomatic faux pas

Apr 05, 2011 Editorial

No one likes embarrassing situations. There have been people who committed dastardly acts rather than face embarrassment. At the level of the government there is often the admonition of not washing the country’s dirty linen in public. That is merely an appeal to avoid creating embarrassing situations.
It is the same need to avoid embarrassment that has sparked the vehemence by the government against the local media and more recently, against Transparency International. But the government seems to be creating embarrassing situations on its own. The particular case at hand involves the Canadian High Commission.
The Canadians set about erecting a shed outside the High Commission. One could only assume that the High Commission was installing security measures. At the same time, it looked as if the High Commission was also installing some security pylons.
It must have set about to make all those with business at the High Commission wait in a comfortable environment. We would assume that the High Commission concluded that the necessary applications were duly made and the requisite permission granted.
But then again the task was entrusted to a Guyanese conmtractor. Perhaps the contractor, recognizing that Guyanese are slow to act and are often keen to ignore anything that smacks of work, failed to ensure that the paperwork was done. In any case, illegal constructions in the city are the order of the day and the contractor must have recognised this.
But there is another aspect to all the confusion that has led to the Canadians losing money and the government creating unnecessary embarrassment for the people of this country. Already people must travel to Trinidad for a visa because the Canadians closed that section of the consular operations here.
From the time the construction began or even before that—from the time the preparations got underway—there should have been some challenge by the Works Ministry. The Canadian High Commission stands at the approach to the Works Ministry, therefore whatever was being undertaken could not have escaped notice.
To wait until millions of dollars had been spent and the construction almost over before smashing everything, must be to send one message to the Canadians. It must have been intended to let the Canadians know that in Guyana there are powerful forces who could destroy the best efforts at a flash.
Perhaps, the people who effected the demolition had to wait for instructions from a higher source and those instructions only came when the construction was well advanced.
The Canadians said that they tried to deal with the matter at the diplomatic level before it had got out of hand. That certainly failed. Perhaps there was no one at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to intervene on behalf of the Canadian High Commission. This is a further embarrassing episode. It would seem as though diplomacy as offered by the government of the day is a toothless poodle. Perhaps there are just people with no authority to do anything.
The Canadians are not going to say anything because as diplomats they should not rush in anger to the press. There is always the threat of expulsion and Guyana has been known to rid itself of troublesome diplomats.
We expect the Works Ministry to report that it was dispensing justice even-handedly. We expect to hear that the reserves must be protected..
For now, we anticipate a backlash. There are Guyanese who are afraid that they are going to be victims of visa rejections. There are others who fear that their relatives in Canada would be ejected with an alacrity that would defy reasoning.
Some things come readily to mind. One is that the administrators are lax and people tend to take advantage of this lax attitude. This may be why the contractors went ahead with the construction without the requisite permission.
Another is that there is no effecting monitoring of the reserves and this led to the almost completed construction of a facility before the Works Ministry intervened.
The third is that we are not too keen to spare any thought to diplomatic efforts.