Unfinished business

Dec 27, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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All, without exception, newspaper columnists and television commentators do a year in review for his/her own country, the world and name the things they would like to see in the future for their own nation.
I have not departed from that tradition since I became a columnist in 1988 and will undertake this three fold task – looking back at my country, the world and offer my dreams for Guyana in forthcoming assessments.
I still have five more essays for this page before we come to the New Year, so let me use today’s article to look at unfinished business.
The President’s outburst at GuySuCo needs analytical examination. He asserted that there will be changes to the management board. President Jagdeo and the PPP remind us of Fidel Castro. Mr. Castro has been in power for 48 years. He made all the decisions but he lacks moral decency to resign in the face of some of the worst social disasters that he presided over.
After the Soviet Union collapsed and Boris Yeltsin of the Russian Federation dissolved the intimacy with Cuba, Castro and the governing Communist Party should have resigned. Castro stepped down after a terminal malady forced him out of office but not out of power. He still conducts the nation’s business from his sick bed.
In Guyana, the PPP has been in power for sixteen years. Mr. Jagdeo has been the President since 1999. These people have coveted power and have made all, I repeat, all the decisions as to what Guyana should be like.
When they fail to achieve competence, they shift the blame to their incestuous nexus, meaning their friend and relative that they have put to run the country.
Donald Ramotar and Komal Chand have been on GuySuCo’s Board of Directors for umpteen years now. The President has directed GuySuCo affairs for nine years. Robert Persaud has been Agriculture Minister since 2006. Yet by some weird acrobatic leap, none of them bears responsibility for the crisis in sugar. The culprits are the people from GuySuCo’s management, never mind that they were the choices of the PPP monarchs.
Go to any public sector area and the syndrome is the same. Joseph O’Lall and Ronald Alli became victims of the PPP’s bankrupt policy on power generation. Ms. Ingrid Griffith was overlooked for the post of Trade Administrator of the GRA; when the crash comes the blame will be leveled at the GRA itself.
The PPP bosses made their election at the Guyana Water Authority; when the rut appears, the water boss may end up being humiliated like O’Lall.
CANU’s head was sacked and replaced; if things fall apart there, the Freedom House kings will not take the moral responsibility to resign.
President Jagdeo requested the UWI Vice-Chancellor to help UG. But who directly intervened to appoint the headship of that institution? Who was it or who were the persons that made the decision to award the contract to build the new Skeldon factory to Chinese engineers? The plant is in deep, deep trouble. The new Skeldon phenomenon may end up as the new Skeldon infamy.
When parts were needed for it, the Government bought them from Australia. Why wasn’t an Australian company chosen in the first place?
What the Guyanese people have not paid attention to recently is an important decision by President Jagdeo. He proclaimed a role for the opposition in the onerous endeavour ahead to save the sugar industry.
Let’s quote the President as reported in last Sunday’s Kaieteur News; “…for the industry to be saved would require collaborative efforts by the management, union, Government and opposition.”
This is an old, perverse pattern repeating itself. Whenever there is a crisis, the Guyanese stakeholders are invoked. Let’s quote President Jagdeo again, this time from the Stabroek News; “…making the industry sustainable was not going to happen if stakeholders across the country failed to give the administration the corresponding support it needed to save GuySuCo”.
There aren’t words to describe this unbelievable descent into wanton shamelessness.
This is a Government that rejects the wish of the Guyanese people to end the state’s monopoly on radio. This is a Government that derides the request of all Guyanese stakeholders to implement what all democratic government has shown a willingness to do – implement the Freedom of Information Act.
This is a Government that in its sixteen years of power has only conceded three sittings of Parliament dedicated to Opposition business.
This is a Government that did not consult the Opposition on the composition of the Integrity Commission. Yet this Government wants all Guyanese stakeholders, including the Opposition, to work with it to save the sugar industry. How about saving democracy instead?

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