Dr. Randy Persaud continues to defend the administration he has unceremoniously abandoned

Jul 17, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
It was reported that Dr. Randy Persaud suddenly packed up and left Guyana.
The reason for his sudden departure is unknown but apparently he continues to defend the administration he has unceremoniously abandoned to return to the United States he inveighs against. If this information is true it is tragic.
I have always pondered about the doctor’s motive for returning to Guyana. I never really quite fathom why someone of his intellect and qualification would return to Guyana to sit in the President’s Office and write propaganda pieces.
Randy Persaud wrote a letter in Kaieteur News, captioned, “Let’s build the Marriot,” dated 7/14/2010, in which he began by criticising Kaieteur News’ columnist, Stella Ramsaroop, for penning a piece critical of the reason the President gave to the Jamaica press for embarking upon the Marriot Hotel Project.
Randy’s boss the traveling salesman President Jagdeo, cannot stand to be in Guyana to do the job he was elected to do, but he found it prudent to stand on foreign soil and criticise the very hotel project that only a few year ago he and his team had praised as the first four star hotel in Guyana. The President was so convinced of the viability and standard of the Buddy’s International Hotel, that he advanced the hotel G$165.7 million, before it was completed, for the sale of rooms to the government (why and if the Government needed so many rooms no one knew).
In addition, the hotel project received a land deal that was far below market value; an estimated tax incentive during the construction phrase of US$1million and tax holidays for five years.
In less than two years the owner Omprakash Shivraj sold the hotel to a Turkish investor for an estimated US$25 million.
The project was estimated to cost US$12 million to build. If this deal had occurred in the United States that Randy reviles, I can assure him someone was going to jail.
The President is at it again, this time his pet project is the Marriot. Perhaps the President knows something about the hotel construction business that most Guyanese do not know.
I wonder who is going to investigate where the money came from to built the mansion he never occupied but sold for a whooping G$120 million. Does the President have an obligation to produce his tax returns for public scrutiny?
Of course these dealings do not concern the professor. What concerns the professor is the fact that Kaieteur News gave a non Guyanese Mrs. Ramsaroop column space to write on women issues.
What if someone told Dr. Persaud that his heroine President Janet Jagan, who had never set foot in Guyana until 1943, ran for a seat in Central Georgetown in 1947, a mere four years after she took up residency. She was incidentally very good at addressing women issues.
Randy is also concerned about the fact that I called for political confrontation. Unlike Randy I am not the type to defend injustice, mismanagement and ineptitude.
Unlike Randy I cannot ignore glaring corruption, extrajudicial killings and political marginalisation and unlike Randy I may live and work in the US, but I still have my Guyanese passport and citizenship. I also form part of the ‘essential mass’ responsible for critical financial inflow for economic sustainability in Guyana, without which, the Guyana economy would collapse.
Therefore I, and every Guyanese in the Diaspora, who remit our hard earned dollar, retain the right to have an interest in the affairs of our country.
For Randy’s curiosity I have participated in anti – war protest action in DC (a form of confrontation), written letters to the Washington Post which was published and confronted the mayor of DC whom I do not support when he attempted to canvass me for support.
Confrontation is a political norm in the US political system. Citizens exercise this right at every level of governance without fear of reprisal.
While I have advocated political confrontation (protest action) in Guyana, I am on record for urging peaceful protest action and I have denounced attacks on members of other ethnic groups. Randy is yet to denounce PPP’s supported violence against African Guyanese.
Randy in his customary style is fond of listing a litany of socio-economic ills that plague the US when he criticises Guyanese in the Diaspora who are critical of the PPP administration. This is the same Randy Persaud who boasts of his opposition to the PNC regime as he lived overseas. He’s like the PPP who while in opposition was critical of the PNC’s constitution but now enjoys the consolidation of power it offers.
I urge Dr. Persaud to exercise some moral certitude.
Dennis Wiggins

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