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Suriname will have our cake and eat it too

Aug 17, 2011 Letters

Dear Editor,
While President Jagdeo was busy receiving 29 tons of building materials from his friend Ed Ahmad which was shipped directly to State House, the Surinamese were busy putting this incompetent PPP government to shame. After talking for donkey years about a highway and railway to Brazil, the Guyana government is now watching the Surinamese take action. Talk is cheap. Action pays well. Suriname is in action. The PPP of Jagdeo and Ramotar are into talk.
They are asleep in their customary incompetence, mismanagement, sloth and indecision. Suriname will have our cake and will eat it too. Brazil delivered a brand spanking new Takutu bridge and told the Guyana government it wanted to start building the road. Nothing happened.
The rank incompetents and cake shop managers dragged their feet. Imagine the world’s 7th largest economy which is poised to become 5th largest in the next few years said to the mismanagers of this nation who like to boast about infrastructure, let’s build this road as soon as possible and the mismanagers did nothing.
Brazil is an economic giant. It exports some US $200 billion every year and that trade is growing. Its Amazon region is becoming an economic powerhouse. Suriname recognized that reality and jumped all over it. Suriname signed a deal with the Chinese to build a railway and highway from Paramaribo to Brazil. They have US $6 billion locked up and ready to spend.
Our President and his consultant Donald Ramotar are still talking. One government is thinking of building railways linking the East Bank and East Coast to Georgetown. The other government is thinking of building a railway to link jobs, wealth creation and trade with one of the most powerful nations on earth. And people have the nerve to call Bharrat Jagdeo a great leader. But it didn’t end there. The Surinamese are building a deep sea harbour to ship some of that US $200 billion in exports from Brazil.
The difference in all of this is the difference between talk and action; between hot air and action. The Guyana Boa Vista railway will be a railway to nowhere by the time it happens. A highway which now can never be built before the Surinamese complete theirs will become a sightseeing bush road. If we give it to another Fip Motilall, we might have to wait another decade for it to be completed. I love Guyana so bad it hurts.
It hurts that my people are living in absolute and abject squalor while opportunities are knocking right on our door and we can’t see it. That our deluded leaders are thinking of building railways for show on the coast when a world of wealth lies south of our border with an economic giant willing to give us a chance at betterment. I can’t take this shocking atrocity that passes for governance lying down. I will not. For when these political con men come knocking on our doors telling us of infrastructure building, grinning from ear to ear, I want you to ask them this: if you’re such a big shot infrastructure builder how come you haven’t yet built a road to Brazil after promising it all these years?
The government of Guyana has denied the people of this country a chance at betterment by failing to act on Brazil’s willingness to help us out by sharing its trade. Now, Suriname will take the cake and eat it too. I guess the promised Jagdeo’s bridge to Suriname is really meant to enable Guyanese suffering the bitter consequences of the PPP’s terrible decision-making and the failed management of the PPP government to run like mad to Suriname when it starts roaring economically.
This is a leader who is more concerned about building a bridge to a competitor nation than building a railway or highway to a nation that can benefit us immensely. I guess it makes more sense to build a bridge to Suriname which is building its road to Brazil than to build a highway to Brazil. Lord help us all. Please go vote for them again before you run to Suriname or line up in front of the US embassy.
M. Maxwell

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