Are these the Government’s policies other countries are likely to adopt

Oct 04, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

As usual, people would call and make suggestions on what they have read in your columns. Over the years, the ideas have been elegantly useful. “Freddie you left out this, Freddie you left out that” is what I would hear. People feel that crucial facts have been omitted that would have enhanced the polemical integrity of your presentations. I was jogging Friday morning in the National Park when Mayor Green called.
He referred to my article for that day. It was about the convenient disappearance of Julius and his mother. Mayor Green felt that I could have mentioned Rupununi as the possible location of Julius because his alleged homosexual lover has contacts there. Green was indeed right. Julius and his mother may be in the Rupununi.
Sunday morning the phone rang incessantly. My article for last Sunday related to the Channel 65 newscast for Thursday evening in which it was broadcast that President Jagdeo told the GUYEXPO opening that other countries are learning from Guyana’s financial policies. I thought that was nonsense. My column briefly described the mess we have been in the past ten years since Mr. Jagdeo assumed governorship of Guyana. In one article, how much examples can you stitch in? Sunday morning the additions came tumbling in. Some of them are worthwhile to reproduce.
I will start with the CARCOM Secretariat.
It is really a tragic demonstration of Guyana’s repugnant leaders in their mediocre vortex and their failed imaginations. The Government was offered six million American dollars from Japan to build the Secretariat if that sum was matched by the State. The deal was signed and a site was identified where the State had massive acres of land. The Secretariat would house under a single roof all the CARICOM offices that were spread all over Georgetown.
After completion, staff began to complain about the smallness of the interior space. Some CARICOM buildings had to remain in Georgetown. Conceding that it allocated too limited an estate for the Secretariat, a private developer was approached to build an annexe across the road. This is an ugly building that reminds me of a dilapidated high rise that is home to lower working class citizens that I once saw in Miami. The Guyana Government pays $US50 M monthly for this carbuncle. Well so far so good. I guess you can say the Government tried and at least built a Secretariat that was far too long living inside the Bank of Guyana. Here comes the idiocy, asininity and imbecility.
The Caricom Secretariat is located at Liliendaal, right in the heart of a gargantuan estate owned by the State. That area could contain twelve Secretariats the size of the present one. Why then you had to go across the road and build an annexe? Then to carry the stupidity to its logical climax, right at the back of the Secretariat, 103 acres of land was recently sold to a close friend of the Leviathan. Is this the country whose business wizardry foreign leaders are impressed with? Who are these other nations that want to learn from us? One has to be Timbuktu (as we Guyanese say in common parlance without being insulting to any race or culture).
One caller said to me, “Man, Freddie how you could leave out Mr. Motilall?” That is the guy that was handed a handsome contract to build a road when there is no evidence to prove that he has road building experience. Another adviser who spoke to me in person laughingly asked why no mention of Gita Singh-Knight who went way, way above the legal restriction for the investment in foreign land of CLICO’s money from Guyana with full knowledge of high officials in the Government of Guyana. He cynically remarked, “Freddie which country so stupid to follow the way the Guyana Government does business?”
Of course I forgot the “learned, talented” leadership in the Guyana Government that put six billion Guyana dollars of NIS money into CLICO and it has vanished into thin air. As mentioned above, I couldn’t get in all the examples in last Sunday article but two will remain nasty and sickening for this writer.
One relates to the Permanent Secretary who signed over 50 bogus duty free letters and was not even given a slap on the wrist and the other was the spring tide warning that citizens had to go on the Government’s web site to read about in order to comprehend the dangers that could have engulfed them. Really, what can these fools teach other countries?

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Are these the Government’s policies other countries are likely to adopt

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