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GPL versus City Council: The Politics of Dictatorship

Nov 26, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There is only one way to stop dictatorship. There has been only one way throughout history to stop dictatorship – people must refuse en mass to let dictatorship drown them.

The story of what GPL owes the M&CC in its rates and taxes and what the M&CC owes GPL in its electricity bill and the shape that the disagreement between the two entities is yet another manifestation of authoritarian rule in this country under a government that was legally elected thus the term, elected dictatorship.

There are times in this country that the dictatorial instincts are so uncivilized that Guyana in 2009 stands out as the worst government in the history of this peaceful area of the world, the Caribbean.

The GPL told the people of Georgetown that there will have to endure hardships, some very onerous, because the M&CC has not paid up its electricity bill and disconnection will follow. Follow it did.

No citizen of this country would disagree with that. GPL needs every cent it can get. GPL has a justified position. If it collects its rates from customers, it can offer a better service.

As it turns out, this was a one-sided cry from GPL.

The revelation stunned Georgetowners — GPL owes M&CC as much as M&CC owes it.

All should have ended well – a simple exchange of cheques. But no! GPL doesn’t want to pay the interest that has accumulated on its debt to the M&CC. There can be no logic to this. This is blatant dictatorship.

GPL owes money to local and foreign banks where the universal requirement of interest default applies. This needs no explanation. Interest is an operating principle in the loan system.

Before the debts of the world’s poorest eleven countries (Guyana included) were wiped out by the G7 GROUP, the situation was that the developing countries were struggling to meet payments on the interest itself muchless on the principle – that is the debt itself.

The GPL has no legal basis to refuse to pay interests on payments owed. The interest could be staggered but it has to be paid. Enter dictatorship. GPL cuts off the electricity to certain functions of the M&CC because it hasn’t paid. M&CC says that you have to pay us so we can get money to pay you.

GPL then says we are paying you what we want to pay you.

This is not only incredible and unbelievable but it keeps taking this country further and further into the chasm of instability, pessimism and nihilism.

How can a straightforward matter like this descend into an act of bullyism on the part of GPL?

The electricity company has to meet its debts to its creditors just like GuySuCo, just like the Government of Guyana. All rate-payers have had to pay interest on their rates and taxes when they fail to meet the deadline. This writer did so.

The City Council should not put up with illegality and arrogance. We all know the City Council has not lived up to expectations. The City Council has few friends in Georgetown. As a citizen of the capital city, I will not give the Council a vote of confidence.

There is a big BUT. But the Council could have done better if we had democracy in Guyana. The City Council is a little toy in the hands of the Central Government. It is the ongoing tragedy of political tribalism. For the past ten years, the M&CC has not been able to plan and strategize on revenue collection.

Every conceivable framework invented by the City Council to augment its coffers has been vitiated by the Central Government. We in Guyana have the most bizarre caricature that you can find anywhere on Planet Earth.

Hugely rich families and business entities owe the City Council hundreds of millions but under the law the City Council cannot seize their properties and the defaulters just bask in their glorious immunity.

This is unconscionable. What the Central Government has done is to deliberately undermine the City Council as part of the permanent battle of US VERSUS THEM. Citizens of Georgetown need to know what the Government did to the City Council when it sold the electricity company to an Irish company.

In the creation of a new company, the Government did not include in the negotiations, the hundreds of millions that the company owed M&CC.

When City Council then asked the Irish for the money, the investors said that legally the new company does not owe City Council that City Council had to collect from the Guyana Electricity Corporation (GEC).

The problem was that GEC was lying in Le Repentir Cemetery.

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