People must demand that Khurshid Sattaur accept this challenge!

Mar 15, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

One hopes that Mr. Khurshid Sattaur, the head of the Guyana Revenue Authority, does not end up like his political bosses. They say all the wonderful things about their performance in government but they never accept a challenge. After sixteen years in power, they are scared to debate their critics, either on live television or in a town-hall meeting.

One of Mr. Sattaur’s direct employers impresses his audiences with all kind of fanciful language, but will end his career in power without an intellectual exchange with his detractors
Mr. Sattaur wrote that I live in a mansion which I could not have built with a UG salary. Well, at least we should thank him for acknowledging that, after sixteen years of domination, his political masters rule over a university where salaries are disgracefully and sickeningly low.
Mr. Sattaur lives in a place that the Guyanese people have nicknamed “Pradoville”. He should be able to judge a mansion from an ordinary house. Now here is the challenge to Mr. Sattaur. If he fails to take it up then he would have exposed himself as a braggadocio not worthy of holding the substantial public-sector post he presently occupies.

I am asking for a group of persons drawn from the ruling party, the Opposition and the Guyana Press Association to make a comparison of houses – mine, the units in “Pradoville,” where Sattaur lives and other “Pradovilles” where the political kings have their palaces. We will choose two quantity surveyors to evaluate the cost of the materials of the houses. The group will look at type of roofing material, windows, doors and fences. Then it will move to the interior of the residences.

Finally, there will be an examination of the size. I live in a typical lower middle-class dwelling constructed with building materials that are at the lower end of the price scale in any hardware store. My challenge to Khurshid Sattaur is that, if on examination of my house and those in the “Pradovilles”, my home exceeds the price of any structure in “Pradoville”, I will resign from UG and stop writing for Kaieteur News.
If Mr. Sattaur can find a home in those “Pradovilles” where, like my own, there is no master bedroom with self-contained features, I will promptly carry out my promise above. If Mr. Sattaur can find in those “Pradovilles” a house where the fence surrounding the perimeter is less expensive than mine, I will keep my word.

Mr. Sattaur’s own premises in “Pradoville” must be part of the comparison. If Mr. Sattaur fails in his endeavour, then he must resign completely from the GRA. Let us see what Mr. Sattaur is made of.
My “mansion” is not in a secluded part of Georgetown where no one can get a full view of it. Mr. Sattaur says I live in a mansion. I am saying I live in a modest three-bedroom home without a master bedroom with all the self-contained features you find in mansions like Mr. Sattaur’s political friends in “Pradoville”.
If Mr. Sattaur could prove that my mansion exists, I will leave my job at UG and quit writing for Kaieteur News immediately. Let Mr. Sattaur bring his own people to evaluate what is a mansion. If he is unable to find my mansion, then he must remove himself from being the tax boss of Guyana. Here is a public figure who exclaimed to the newspaper readers that I live in a mansion.

Even the smallest child knows what a mansion is. He must accept the challenge now!
As the tax chief of Guyana, it is morally incumbent on Mr. Sattaur to ascertain in what year of my employment I built my “mansion”. My wife started working in 1984. I began at UG in 1986. I never had a home of my own until 2006, the year I began construction.

Now, what were the salaries of Mr. Sattaur’s political friends who built their castles in “Pradoville” and in what year? The PPP came to power in 1992 at a time when my UG salary placed me in a higher income bracket than Mr. Sattaur’s political bosses. Yet they started “Pradoville” in 1995 and I had to wait until 2006.
I call upon the tax chief to press Mr. Donald Ramotar to name the businessmen who helped me build my home. This was the announcement Mr. Ramotar made three years ago at Dr. Jagan’s death anniversary. Mr. Ramotar repeated that in the letter pages of this newspaper.
I will come to the polygraph that Mr. Sattaur and I must take in the coming days in another column. Mr. Sattaur and I must take the polygraph as soon as possible.

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