Did Burt Bacharach have the PPP in mind?

Apr 26, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

A few years ago, Burt Bacharach released an album titled, “At this time,” One of the cuts (“Who are these people?) contains the following lyrics’
“Who are these people that keep telling us lies
And how did these people get control of our lives?
Make them stop
Who are these people that destroy everything
And sell off the future for whatever it brings?
And what kind of leaders can’t admit when they’re wrong?
Make them stop.”
These words are so graphically applicable to the rule of President Bharrat Jagdeo and the PPP that you wonder if the great composer had Guyana in mind when he penned that song.
In my column last Thursday (“To all Guyanese, this is who they are.”), I made reference to a particular observance in Mr. Jagdeo’s address to his party members in Berbice who had gathered for a meeting to endorse Mr. Ramotar as the PPP’s presidential candidate.
He said that the media wants to define for party supporters who the PPP is and the PPP is not going to let the media side-track it from bringing development to Guyana.
What Mr. Jagdeo meant was that the media was presenting an image of the PPP to the people of Guyana that was not true. Two issues need to be discussed here. Is the picture carried by the media a correct one? Secondly, what and where is the development? In that column last Thursday, I sought to highlight the objective situation on the ground without recourse to any image framed by the media. In today’s essay, I continue along that theme. We can use literally thousands of perversities to define who or what is the PPP. One hopes the people of Berbice are reading.
We can start with a recent essay by Dr. Alissa Trotz in the Stabroek News. She looked at the Bill passed in Parliament that takes care of Mr. Jagdeo’s post-presidential life. When it was done in Parliament it created a shock throughout Guyana.
Mr. Jagdeo’s retirement package is extremely indecent in the context of what he has given himself or the PPP or what the Parliament has given him.
Dr. Trotz made a comparison with other countries, including the US, and concludes that Mr. Jagdeo’s goodies are more plentiful than other foreign, retired leaders.
Here is a case of Mr. Jagdeo and his party defining who they are and not the media doing it.
Let’s look at Pradoville 1 and 2 and see if we need the help of the press to define Mr. Jagdeo and the PPP. Under the house lot scheme in general, you cannot sell your lot until ten years after. I do not know if Mr. Jagdeo sold his house outside of the ten-year restriction but he received $120M for his (I say most unapologetically that structure was not worth even half of that figure on the real estate market) from a Trinidadian fellow who does public relations work for the Government.
The President then happily skipped across the road from Pradoville1 in Ogle to Pradoville 2 in Sparendam where public land was purchased by him and other PPP elites individually at $5M per acre.
Do Berbicians really believe Mr. Jagdeo when he told them that it is the media that is defining for them who the PPP is? Are Berbicians that stupid that they cannot see that it is the PPP leaders themselves who are defining for the nation who they are and what is there for all to see – people that Burt Bacharach wrote about in the song referred in the opening paragraphs of this column.
And what about development? Mr. Jagdeo told the Berbician audience that the PPP isn’t going to let the media define what the PPP is, the point is to get on with development. Are Berbicians living in Berbice or in a fool’s paradise?
Mr. Jagdeo has months before he completes 12 years in power. Statistics from top international organisations, including the World Bank and the IDB, reveal that the past ten years (remember Mr. Jagdeo is in power for twelve years now) income inequalities have widened.
Just walk around Guyana and you will see who benefited from Mr. Jagdeo’s dozen years. The same statistics will show that the state of poverty remains at the levels they were before Mr. Jagdeo became President. So where is the development?
If anyone can answer that question it is the average Berbician? Guysuco has collapsed. GPL continues to be the sick man of Guyana. And look at that cost to drive across the ugly Berbice Bridge

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Did Burt Bacharach have the PPP in mind?

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