The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Perry Christie and his flyboy Foreign Minister Fred Mitchell continue to be tone-deaf to the cries of middle and working class Bahamians who are struggling to pay the mortgage, send their kids to school, keep the lights on and put food on the table.

Hard on the heals of splashing out to fly a contingent of British Privy Council judges and their retinue here for a working vacation at our expense, there was Christie and Mitchell at it again slamming down our maxed-out credit card to pay for a backyard party for the President of Guyana.

Christie and Mitchell couldn’t even get their stories straight. They sold the occasion as a State visit, the highest honour a country can give a visiting head of state. Problem is, President David Granger told the Guyanese people he was on an Official visit to The Bahamas.

For those schooled in the art of diplomacy and protocol, there is a big difference between a State Visit and an Official Visit. For starters, for a State visit it is Her Majesty’s Representative in the Bahamas, the Governor General, who should send out the invitation, not the Prime Minister, and certainly not the Foreign Minister.

Guyana is a Republic and so Mr Granger doubles as both head of state and head of government. If it were a state visit then the only person who could host him is our Governor General, Dame Marguerite Pindling.

She would have to be the one welcoming him to the Bahamas and it would have been Government House, not the Cabinet Office coordinating every move he made on Bahamian soil.

But instead we saw Christie and his Cabinet at the airport with Police Force and Defence Force guards of honour plus a Junkanoo “rush-out” to welcome the Guyanese President. We learned later that he paid a “courtesy call” on the representative of our head of state. Dame Marguerite was most gracious to receive him because if it truly were a state visit, then Mr. Granger would have committed a fatal diplomatic faux pas.

But all and sundry knew that it was an official invitation, something that is within the remit of the Prime Minister and he need not consult with Her Excellency. His obligation was merely to advise her of his action.

I have no doubt that Fred Mitchell went to Guyana last year to represent us at the 50th anniversary celebration of their independence from Britain and that it was then that he “puff up he chest” and invited Granger to The Bahamas.

Of course, it turned out to be perfectly timed, as Christie needed to divert the nation’s attention away from his vulgar hand gesture. The visit afforded him an opportunity to show off and puff up his chest.

For the consumption of his audience back home, Granger was telling his media that this was an official visit and that he was looking for economic assistance from The Bahamas.

Guyana is a rich country imbued with gold and other natural resources. Trouble is that for decades that wealth has been spirited out of the country and what remains is very poorly distributed.

That is about to change though as Guyana recently discovered that there are billions of barrels of oil deep in the waters off their coast. They could be swimming in money once this oil starts flowing and the price stabilises.

It was perfectly okay for Granger to want to come here to discuss Caricom issues. He just happens to be the current head of Caricom, an organisation that Christie treats with such contempt that he rarely attends meetings of the heads of government. That assignment duly falls to Mitchell and you can see how the mingling with Prime Ministers could cause the Foreign Minister to get ideas beyond his station.

To Granger, this was an economic mission to The Bahamas. He wanted to first tap into the Guyanese diaspora here who, as a group, are a highly educated lot making significant contributions to the development of our country and we ought to be grateful. But they are, by and large, handsomely rewarded for their services and some of that money ends up as remittances that Guyana needs.

Guyana is ripe for eco tourism and Granger wants to learn from us how to exploit the tourism goose. No problem with that, it’s good to help out our cousins. But if they want our help, shouldn’t Christie have been the one invited for an official visit, and if they insisted on a state visit then surely Mr Granger should have invited Dame Marguerite.

During the week Christie commandeered a Bahamasair plane to fly the President and his delegation to Freeport (so he needs to stop complaining when Bahamasair comes cap in hand looking for subvention).

So while a new $20m Bahamasair plane was pulled from service, the President’s private aircraft sat at Lynden Pindling International. Hopefully it was out of Christie’s line of sight because the next thing you can bet on is that in the dark of night Christie will do one up on Mr Granger and buy a bigger plane for his personal use as Prime Minister. Christie continues to demonstrate his penchant for embellishing his role as Prime Minister, forgetting that the Governor General is above him.

Then there was the so-called state dinner at the Hilton in Nassau where the vintage champagne flowed like a busted Water and Sewerage Corporation street pipe.

Guyana makes undoubtedly the best rum in the world and one can only hope that President Granger walked in with a couple cases of his 50th anniversary El Dorado Demerara premium rum that sells for $3,500 a bottle (+VAT, of course).

At least then we could auction off the rum to help our broke Treasury pay for this unnecessary, unwarranted waste of public money.

THE GRADUATE

Nassau,

Marach 13, 2017.