While infamous for its publication of mischievous and  fabricated  stories, yesterday’s ‘Kaieteur News’ had two amusing political reports.

One report, which dealt with recent defections by New York-based members of the minority opposition Alliance For Change (AFC), quoted the  leader of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), David Granger, as claiming that a trio of “defectors” who have crossed over to APNU, had done so because they “were not being listened to…” by the leadership of their party.
Political defections is a way of life for some parties in various countries, with a mix of complaints and allegations, among them disregard for their expressed viewpoints.
In the case under review, the trio of AFC defectors should know that they are now in the company of others within a party whose real base resides in what facilitated its general election debut, namely the Peoples National Congress (PNC).
Himself a relative newcomer to leadership of the PNC, albeit with a slim majority of fifteen votes, David Granger would know of his party’s own history of defections (as also does the People’s Progressive Party). Among the more prominent of such ‘defectors’ was Forbes Burnham himself, the late founder-leader of the party that Granger currently heads, thanks to a meager 15-vote majority at the PNC’s last Congress.
When Granger, PNC leader and chairman of APNU seeks to score a political point over its “parliamentary ally, the AFC, with  his claim that the  trio of  defectors from the AFC were  “not being  listened to,” he would know that the jury remains out on  his own personal commitment to “consult, listen and learn”.
What, for instance, has been the nature and integrity of “consultations”  by the  PNC and APNU on the valuable documents that were provided to  Mr Granger as Opposition Leader by  President Donald Ramotar.
Defectors from the AFC who have included lack of consultations on the ‘Amaila hydro-electric project, could perhaps seek to inform themselves about the extent and legitimacy of “consultations” within the PNC and APNU on this  single most important economic development project in Guyana’s history.   There is a political cost coming for this sort of political arrogance under the leadership watch of Mr Granger.
On an entirely different note, the other “amusing” report earlier alluded to in yesterday’s Kaieteur News, relates  to an article  headlined, “OAS to probe corruption in Guyana”.
Obsessed as it is known to be about allegations of “corruption” against the  PPP-led administration and its agencies,  that newspaper presented its report  as if  unaware that there is NOTHING unusual, or special, about the coming meeting in Guyana of the anti-corruption mechanism of the OAS, known by its Spanish acronym, “MESICIC”. It is a mechanism with which member states of the hemispheric organization routinely cooperate.
Presidential advisor, Gail Teixeira, was, therefore, quite restrained in her explanatory response at a media briefing last Thursday on the coming October 8-10 meeting in Guyana of    representatives of MESICIC, an expert group on which she herself has been serving since 2008.
At the same time, the Presidential Advisor did not refrain from expressing her deep disappointment over comments attributed to Canada’s newly-accredited High Commissioner to Guyana, Nicole Giles, when alluding to perceptions of “concerns about corruption in Guyana”.
What little is known about Envoy Giles, as a diplomat in Guyana, is that she may well have sacrificed the level of goodwill she would need to faithfully serve her government and the Canadian people with competence and integrity, as a consequence of her totally uncalled for intervention about perceptions of corruption in Guyana.
Teixeira contend that while Giles “is free to her opinion, and the opinion, I assume of her government, I feel the way in which it is presented is an unfortunate one in terms of Guyana/Canada relations…”
Well, since the Presidential Advisor would herself be aware of the historical good relations that have prevailed in Canada/Guyana diplomatic, trade, aid and cultural relations, mutual efforts could yet be made to correct an error in judgment.