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Confronting the issues

Mar 10, 2012 Editorial

 

It was William Shakespeare who wrote in Hamlet ‘The lady doth protest too much’.  Simply put, this statement suggests that someone is being castigated for being too defensive of a situation. I have seen other definitions, some suggesting that someone has something to hide and the more that person protests the more he is presenting himself as the guilty party.
For an airline owner to leave Florida and to come to defend his operations because of publications in the local media suggests that something may be wrong. Usually, people in foreign lands would simply issue a press release of hire a public relations firm to answer all queries.
In this case Sonny Ramdeo felt that it was necessary to travel to Guyana with a full team to address questions raised in the local media. This may have been the best approach—confront the critics and deal with all the issues at one go.
The company flew in a team to Guyana to meet with all sections of the society that would have raised queries about its ability to construct the facility and to justify the project. But such actions are relatively rare. No one came forward to discuss the new Skeldon sugar factory, none came forward when the country was undertaking the road programmes and surely, there was no one to explain some of the projects in the pipeline.
Sonny Ramdeo flew to Guyana to confront allegations that he was the front man for moneyed Guyanese who had so much money that they needed somewhere to invest in. He also denied that he was being supported by anyone.
Sonny Ramdeo was never known to be a man of means. He had a mortgage, he made the smallest possible down payment on his home and he held down a full-time job. These raised flags about his ability to start up an airline.
However, he contends that he had assets by way of pensions, stocks and bank savings. He said that he saw the airline as an investment opportunity despite the fact that airlines are risky businesses. For a man to go to such lengths to the extent of putting his home at risk is interesting. Sonny Ramdeo must be a very shrewd businessman because he says that he is already making money.
What must be admired is that he was prepared to confront any critic of his enterprise. Whether some of his answers leave a lot unanswered is not an issue. The fact that he opted to present himself to answer any question speaks a lot.
This would have been something that we would have liked to see on the part of the government. In recent times there have been numerous questions about projects but instead of making respective officials available to answer these questions the government has often opted to remain silent, sometimes attacking the messenger in those sections of  the media that are government controlled.
There have not been many answers to queries about the Amaila Falls project. Sithe Global the foreign contractor would only say that the government should speak for itself. We cannot get answers to the progress on the road since the government withdrew the contract from Synergy Holdings. The contractors remain a secret as is the new cost of the road project.
The only person to speak on the proposed Marriott Hotel was the officials who featured at the sod turning ceremony. Since then there has been nary a word.
There has also been a marked silence on so many other projects. Indeed, when critics raised questions about the Enmore Packaging Plant and compared the reported expenditure to larger plants of the same nature, the government took the media on a tour. It was then we learnt that some of the money touted for the plant went into rehabilitating sections of the Enmore sugar factory.
No one is coming forward to talk about the airport expansion programme and the list goes on. Sonny Ramdeo may have set the stage for people and companies to operate in the face of investments that attract queries.

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