FOR AN experienced politician and former Minister of Finance, Carl Greenidge seems committed to embarrassing himself, as well as his party, the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR). His latest act came on Friday when, as reported in another section of the media, he blamed the Guyana Government for not responding to claims of discrimination against Guyanese at Trinidad and Tobago’s international airport at Piarco.

As an MP of APNU (A Partnership for National Unity), Greenidge has given notice of various questions for which he is seeking answers in the National Assembly. That’s his right and we have no doubt that they would be answered in time by the relevant cabinet ministers.

For now we wish to address his expressed anger, directed at the government, over reports of recurring discrimination to which Guyanese are often treated at Piarco International:

Briefly, either due to his frequent overseas visits, or the consequence of a deep‘Rip-van-Winkle’-like sleep, MP Greenidge may well have missed the various personal interventions by Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carolyn Rodriques-Birkett, on this deplorable practice to which Guyanese have too often been subjected at Piarco International.

The minister’s responses have been reported in the print and electronic media in Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, including her initiative to engage the attention of her T&T counterpart, Foreign Minister Winston Dookeran, who had expressed his own concerns over such reports and promised to have the problem investigated.

Indeed, Minister Rodriques-Birkett is on record as having personally witnessed acts of humiliating discrimination at Piarco International. However, rather than engaging in emotional outbursts, she chose the dignified route of officially communicating her concerns to the government of that CARICOM partner state.

It cannot be that Mr. Greenidge wants the Foreign Minister of Guyana to engage in open confrontational politics with a partner state of CARICOM, especially one with which we have traditionally maintained good relations, irrespective of administrations in Georgetown and Port-of-Spain?

Whatever his own internal party political problems, MP Greenidge ought to know that consolidating and expanding mutually satisfactory relations with ALL member countries of CARICOM is a major plank of Guyana’s foreign policy.

In due course the other questions to which he is seeking answers, such as the ‘flagship agreement’ reached with state-owned Caribbean Airline Ltd (CAL), would also be appropriately addressed—hopefully with Mr. Greenidge being present in parliament.