The majority of progress has come from the people, not the government

Aug 06, 2011 Letters

Dear Editor,
There has been little legitimate and genuine economic growth in 19 years under the PPP. 19 years of poor governance has delivered virtually nothing to this country.
Whatever signs of progress and development we see today and there aren’t many, have come from people, not from government.
This development has occurred in spite of government. It came from the burdensome taxes that the PPP has squeezed out of the hands of already impoverished people to wastefully and incompetently build things for show.
And then it came from people taking massive risks on paltry incomes to build better dwellings and to secure a better existence in a crime-ridden nation for themselves.
While the GRA is kicking down the door on our paycheques, Guyanese are taking on major personal debt in search of a better life. Let’s get this straight: the people’s money from already stagnant wages has generated whatever little real development this country has had in the past 19 years. No wonder people are bawling murder with the cost of living in this PPP paradise.
You get hammered with taxes and then you must assume monstrous debt to get a better existence.
When the PPP comes around your neighbourhood during the campaign and claims it built this and that, ask them who really built it, paid for it, and was crushed by taxes to deliver it.
Guyanese pay some of the highest taxes in the world. And we are dirt poor. Should you really have to pay all those taxes and still buy iron grills for your windows and doors or buy a car because you travel at night for work?
When government can’t create the conditions for economic expansion, incomes stagnate.
When taxes increase in an environment of stagnating income, you get grave suffering. Even worse, when corruption, mismanagement, squandermania and waste are necessary ingredients on how governments spend your money they collect in taxes, there is inequality to go with the suffering.
So here’s the cold, hard truth: the PPP’s boast about infrastructural development is hollow, as such development has come by enslaving already poor people to taxes.
They (PPP) have built white elephants all across this country, wasting, corrupting and mismanaging people’s hard earned money.
The PPP’s philosophy has been simple: take more taxes from the hands of the working class and then ask them to take on more personal debt. The PPP scampishly tries to take credit for all that the Guyanese people have done to better themselves by paying taxes and borrowing millions. They point to the nice homes and the cars as a sign of their development and progress given to the country.
But this is all a fat nasty lie. Does the PPP pay the mortgage that occurs like a nightmare every month for tens of thousands of Guyanese? Did the PPP take on this personal debt? Does it owe the bank millions for your nice-looking house? No, it doesn’t. This is all about the Guyanese people taking risks. On their own.
After paying with the shirt off their backs in taxes to the PPP. The PPP did not build your house.
It did not buy your car. It does not provide you with free electricity. It charges you for water.
So when the PPP claims that the upsurge in housing development is its doing, it is lying. It is the people who are biting their teeth and banding their bellies to change their circumstances.
Clearing a swamp, cutting a single road into the cleared bush and putting down some lots with no playgrounds and amenities is not housing.
There are those who pay millions for a small slice of land to watch it become a safe haven for wandering donkeys and grazing cows.
This burden the people of this country have borne to better their lives should not be latched upon by a government that taxes them to the hilt, as proof of development and progress. If Donald Ramotar becomes President, there is a distinct possibility there will be financial blood on the streets, with inflation looking for an inexperienced and visionless leader to start running like a madman.
The nightmare will get even bigger. Cost of living is a bigger headache than under the PNC, which cannot ever return to power anyway in this current political landscape.
A lot of illegal wealth is building fancy houses in this country. So are remittances. People in this country need to wake up and see the light. That is, after that GPL blackout you are now experiencing.

M. Maxwell

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