‘Joe the Plumber’ at GPL

Oct 29, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

If you have read my article, “Joe the Plumber on the Harbour Bridge,” for October 18, you would know that I have lifted the story of ‘Joe the Plumber’ from its American political milieu and have given it a peculiar Guyanese context. Just in case you missed “Joe the Plumber on the Harbour Bridge,” let me reiterate what I mean by ‘Joe the Plumber’ in Guyana. Barack Obama went campaigning, and in the crowd was this guy whose middle name is Joe.
He told Obama that he is a plumber who wants to buy a small plumbing business but Obama’s tax plans would hurt him. John McCain picked up on the story and popularised Joe the Plumber. He keeps telling Americans that Obama’s tax regime, if Obama wins, would hurt small business people like Joe the Plumber.
As it turned out, when you examine how much Joe the Plumber would make from his investment, then it is Mc Cain’s tax cuts that would leave Joe the Plumber without any benefits, because Mc Cain’s tax concessions favour the very wealthy. No doubt, Mc Cain’s advisors knew this but they found a good campaign slogan in Joe the Plumber, hoping to fool the lower earners and the middle classes that Mc Cain is their man.
In practical politics, then, Mc Cain was trying to find a survival kit, and he found it in Joe the Plumber.
My transportation of Joe the Plumber to Guyana is to show that Mr. Jagdeo is behaving like Mr. Mc Cain. They are both looking for a gift to obfuscate their failures. In Mr. Jagdeo’s case, he is finding fault with a series of publicly owned entities that are not performing. And guess who is to be blamed – the small man, Joe the Plumber (varying the context, of course). The corporation boss handpicked by Mr. Jagdeo (remember what happened to Mark Kirton?) is coming in for licks while Mr. Jagdeo’s micromanagement obsession gets lost from the picture. Joe the Plumber first turned up at the Berbice Harbour Bridge (Oh God! No, don’t tell me they will name the structure after Papa Cheddi). The bridge was to catch Carifesta fever; it didn’t.
Then October was the planned date. Now we don’t know when it will hang over the river.
Joe the Plumber then moved to the new Skeldon sugar factory. Again, the scapegoats were announced. The managers got the blame, not the party kings who selected them in the first place. Joe travelled from Skeldon to the West Coast of Demerara and found himself last week at the Harbour Bridge. Joe is now at Kingston at the GPL.
While at GPL, Joe met another Joe; only, that other Joe was talking from his grave. Joe the Energy Man was fired by President Jagdeo at the beginning of this year, because something about fuel for GPL he was alleged to have miscalculated, and that was why GPL didn’t have fuel, and that was why we got blackouts under Joe, the Energy Man. Joseph O’Lall subsequently died of a heart attack.
His friends told me he could not take the strain of being fired wrongfully and seeing the PPP that he served for fifty years (yes, fifty) refusing to come to his rescue. I interviewed him before he died (see my Jan 23, 08 column) and he made the same complaint.
It is almost a year since Joe O’Lall was fired for alleged incompetence in the purchase and payment of fuel for GPL, but blackouts have returned with a vengeance. In its editorial of October 24, this paper wrote that it hopes the management of GPL is not made the scapegoats.
Well, it looks like they have been assigned blame. Joe the Plumber is already at GPL. And when you see Joe the Plumber at a public corporation you must know that the scapegoats have arrived.
It should be noted that when Joe O’Lall was fired and the Chairman of GPL, Ronald Alli, (current Chairman of Guysuco Board; and you know Joe the Plumber was in Skeldon two weeks ago) was removed at the same time, the President did not solicit the help of the business community, the opposition, or civil society in finding a replacement.
The President himself appointed the Head of the Privatisation Unit, Mr. Winston Brassington, to act as Chairman. Here we see clearly how Joe the Plumber is just a convenient tool for Mr. Jagdeo as he is for John Mc Cain in the US.
So, will Mr. Brassington get the blame for what is happening at GPL? I guess the question on the minds of all readers after they would have read this column is: where next will Joe turn up?

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‘Joe the Plumber’ at GPL

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