Of corruption and cronyism

Feb 23, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Today as we are concentrating on the issue of potential candidates for the presidential elections, we address certain issues such as the position of the candidates with regards to inclusiveness and powers of the President, but what is not being discussed is the type of economic policies and strategies that would be employed to take us out of the crisis we are in.
It would be argued that we are not in a crisis, that we have a viable economy, but the issue we have in my opinion is the growing gap between the rich and the poor, the haves and the  haves not; unemployment and under employment of so many of our people especially our youths.
Many try to say that we are worse off than in 1992 but this is absolutely ridiculous. There has been development; improvement of our infrastructure and our per capita income has risen from US$204 to over US$1100. Our health and education systems have improved. We however, have not affected performance qualitatively. We have too much corruption and waste.
There is too much cronyism with regards to facilitating the business people. This cronyism is reflected in a way that allows real basis for the claim of racial discrimination as it would seem that Indians are the beneficiary of this cronyism. Obviously the friends and the family of the President are mainly Indians.
While this is so and need to be addressed there is no doubt that the system even if it allows more black participation would still result the marginalization of the vast majority of Indians, blacks and Amerindians.
What we have to ensure is that changes must not only be for more Black businessmen to be given opportunities with system set in place to address this but must seriously tackle the structure that allows a minority even though multi racial to hog the wealth of this country at the expense of the working class, professionals and poor farmers.
Too many do not even attempt to make objective analysis of the situation and so too often writers condemn the PPP as being communist and forget that the economic policies being followed are fundamentally capitalist. Even if they are correct to classify the rule as autocratic or dictatorial the reality is that capitalism itself can exist under varying rule from fascist to parliamentary democracy.
And so I repeat that President Jagdeo has been following the Washington Consensus slavishly with no demonstrable vision and creativity albeit with cronyism attached.
This allowed unfortunately for a capitalist free for all with trade, capital and financial liberalization.
This makes me recall the fact that Dr. Cheddi Jagan acted affirmatively to protect local businesses to allow them space to become strong.
So I maintain that in addition to elections and the election of the best possible candidate, we have to consider how we tackle the economic issues? What economic strategies should we adopt and here is the biggest problem as so many of even our qualified people seem to be locked into systems of ideas that preclude objectivity.
It is a known fact that the so called free press is under the control of the ruling economic elites and so it will not in a big way support the dissemination of information, ideas and concepts that are not in their interests.
So many have become subject to this but are unable to accept even the possibility that they are being manipulated by the media.
This manipulation is further expanded as conversation with each other of like minds reinforces the ideas that they have internalized. They have not come to accept that they do not produce ideas that are fully independent of the media and other mechanisms of indoctrination.
For instance, they would discuss Venezuela, and Iran to the exclusion of other countries as that is what the press pushes.
The fact that Americans call Obama Socialist and communist is proof of this lack of understanding and indoctrination.
Now suddenly we have come to realize that while the USA pushed us to concentrate and talk about Chavez, and the Iranian leader (both elected) and condemning them for being undemocratic, there is no discussion of the countries, allies of the USA and the United Kingdom that are undemocratic and repressive.
Remember Openheimer who writes constantly about Chavez and the repetition that Chavez is a narcissist Leninist. Now the Allies of the USA and the West as we are now becoming aware were not placed there by the people and I am speaking of the recent uprisings in the Middle East. The press is now forced to discuss the dictatorships that are/were in place in many of the countries that were allies of the USA and the UK supposedly the big defenders of democracy.
This should open our eyes as to the real possibilities that we are being subjected to mental manipulation.
I call upon the press, the letter writers and those in the blog sites to commence discussion as to the type of economic strategies that would take Guyana forward. While political democracy is important economic democracy should be the concomitant objective that any future president and government should work towards.
Rajendra Bisessar

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