Peeping Tom – Let the facts speak for themselves

Jun 30, 2008 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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On Saturday, I overheard a conversation between some men about the incident involving Magistrate Gordon Gilhuys. In fact, I heard more than one group of persons discussing this matter over the weekend.

Much of the discussions were speculative and based on hearsay. Some were extremely colourful.
One particular discussion, however, was an interesting example of social psychology in Guyana. Here was a group of taxi drivers, along with two other men, discussing a matter of which they obviously knew very little, but on which they pretended they were experts.

From the way these men were offering their versions of what took place, you would believe they were the detectives investigating the matter.

I was surprised they could not relate what colour shirt the magistrate was wearing at the time of the incident. I do not know what Magistrate Gordon Gilhuys was doing on Woolford Avenue. I do not know whether he was answering a call of nature, of whether he was answering some other call.

I do not know why he chose to be in a dark, desolate street at that time of the night. I do not know, also, why the Police chose to go after him. I do not know if the Police identified themselves, or acted in accordance with the standard operating procedures.

What I do know is that there are many people in Guyana who like to see big men fall. If that person is a Government minister, a politician or a state official, then the better it is.

There are thousands of Guyanese who derive some weird sense of poetic justice when they see a powerful person fall from grace.

There are therefore many persons who will look lopsidedly at this case, and this is even more so if the facts are not clear to them, thus opening the doors to speculation.

It is precisely because of his standing in society, moreso because he is a judicial officer, that I urge Mr. Gordon Gilhuys to consult with his lawyer and to issue a public statement on the matter.

This, I believe, would go a long way towards quelling public speculation.
There are other areas of national life in which public speculation needs to be quelled. One such area concerns the latest daily newspaper in Guyana.

With this new entrant should come competition within the media. There is no doubt that this competition is healthy.

However, very often this competition takes place on an unlevel plane. For example, Kaieteur News never had the expectation when it started that it automatically had a right to receive ads from both the public and private sectors.

We knew that we had to build a reputation and build circulation. However, even after we had done so, we were still denied state advertisements. We had to keep going without any form of support from the Government.

Now we have a situation where a new newspaper has been launched. We are told that this new newspaper did not receive any concessions on its printing press.

However, this newspaper is part of a group of companies that got the deal of a lifetime in relation to the lease of the Sanata complex, and indirectly this is a benefit to the company, even if the newspaper does not directly benefit from tax holidays and fiscal concessions.

The Government itself has accepted that, in relation to the Sanata deal, the investor got more than what was advertised.

In fact, it got the deal of a lifetime, and was promised tax holidays; a promise which it was later discovered was not in accordance with the law. It would equally be interesting to see whether the fiscal concessions approved for this investor are also in accordance with what pertains at the moment.

On top of that, the Government is saying that it will go to Parliament to amend the law to facilitate widening the definition of pioneering investments.

Why is the Government willing to do this? And why is it not laying in Parliament the agreement it entered into with the investors at Sanata?

After all, this is not anyone’s personal property. That property at Sanata is the property of the people of Guyana, and every citizen has a right to know what has become of his or her interest in that facility. Every single taxpayer has a right to know what was agreed to between the Government and the investors at Sanata.
The Opposition has called for the contract signed between the Government and the investors at Sanata to be made public.

This column supports that call, even more so because, with each passing day, we seem to be getting different information. For, example, we were told that the lease fee of G$50M was denominated in US dollars and indexed to that currency.

This column had, however, asked why the fee was not linked to inflation. Now emerges a report in the Guyana Chronicle that the fee is indexed to the consumer price index.

Why was this not revealed all along? Or is this a new clause that has been inserted following the many criticisms made of the Sanata deal?

It is for this reason that I support the call for the agreement to be made public. After all, we are dealing with a done deal, and the people of Guyana have a right to be informed about the terms and conditions under which their property has been privatized.

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