Doing business with people who fail to follow best practice with respect to anti-corruption principles

May 10, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
For Guyana to prosper, global business leaders must want to do business with us. It is amazing how much they are willing to do business in emerging markets, but on the flip side how strongly they feel about not tainting their operations with ‘banana republic’ type of corruption.
Many international businesses are closing the gap between corruption risks and their in-house anti-corruption programmes regardless of the rewards.
This will explain why the Jagdeo Government and the PPP has failed to engage the DELL’s, the GE’s and the other better run companies of the world. They will always have to run to some business people who fail to follow best practice with respect to anti-corruption principles and the waste of our country’s limited resources away.
Case in point, it is OK in the PPP for Huawei, the Chinese company, to give the Jagdeo Government a US$50,000 “peanut butter and grease” hand shake after securing a multi-billion dollar contract for the IT cable from Lethem to the Coast. When one looks carefully at the incestuous relationship between the leaders of the PPP, the IT cable contractor and the Office of the Project Manager of the IT Cable Project, then there is much reason to embrace the contractor come what may.
This is not only about the questionable laptops; this is also about the hiring of under skilled Project Managers to do jobs at multiples of his net worth based on their experience and skills.
There are much unearned benefits for the leaders of the PPP as a result of these two Projects so the “butter and stutter” incestuous relationship between the PPP, the One Laptop project, the IT Cable Project and the Chinese contractor is slowly unraveling. The Stalinist movement in Guyana, the PPP, is hell bent on getting their own way even if it means the taxpayers of Guyana will be denied billions of dollars in funds which are being leaked into private pockets as a result of these two contracts. If this is not corruption of the highest order, then what is?
Corruption has a giver and a taker and if the Jagdeo Government had clearly stated that no, we will not take the US$50,000 in equipment and further more because of this questionable gesture, we will re-tender the contract. Can you imagine how many international companies would have flocked to Guyana shores to do business? But the inescapable reality in Guyana is, it is OK under the PPP to “butter and stutter, grease and feast” once friends and families are well taken care of.
What is most disgusting, the PPP is so callous to the taxpayer that they are willing in the Mirror newspaper to attack legitimate criticism not with factual rebuttals, but with nonsensical statement such as those found in a March article “Criticism of the One Lap Top project is highly implausible”. This clearly demonstrates that the PPP clearly is at home with this “grease and feast” method of operations in the Jagdeo Government. Dr. Jagan with his lean and clean mentality must be one restless soul. What has he nurtured in the PPP when he was the boss?
The Oxford Dictionary tells me that implausible is unconvincing and not reasonable.
What is unreasonable about the Guyanese people inquiring about a questionable gift of US$50,000 in computers from a company that has secured a large Government contract under dubious circumstances?
What is not reasonable about the Guyanese people saying buy desktops instead, which are easier to maintain, harder to steal and putting them into school so that every school child has access to a computer at school in a managed environment?
But being the communist they are, Stalin’s views and the views of his cabal are the only views in Guyana and thus the thought of the Guyanese people, their ideas, and their wishes are irrelevant. In accordance with Animal Farm – some animals are more equal than other. Hail to Napoleon.
The same PPP/Jagdeo philosophy can be observed in how they foisted the selection and engagement of the inexperience Chinese contractor to build the Skeldon Sugar factory. This experience was repeated in how they chose the contractor to build the Amaila Falls Road by not conducting proper due diligence on the contractor and guess what?
After spending billions of the taxpayers’ money, Dr. Luncheon was finally convinced that the contractor is “hopelessly behind schedule”. Let us make it clear, that contractor is unable to finish that road, he told a good friend of mine this privately.
The inescapable reality, he has under bid and has withdraw so much funds from the project that this road, even with expert monitoring is heading in one direction – another Supenaam Wharf, a white elephant.
Hail to the intellectually and skillfully incompetence in the ruling cabal. I hope that these upcoming elections will be an opportunity for the people to read the Alliance for Change (AFC) Action Plan which can be found at www.voteafc.com and provide themselves with information and ideas to positively influence their voting strategy in a very challenging country.
The time for change is now and the time to think before you ink is soon. Do not condemn your children to five more years of the little Stalins.
Sixtus Edwards

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