Are the PPP’s leaders clueless?

Apr 17, 2012 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
The budget speeches that are being heard online via Mark Benschop radio is absolutely fantastic to listen to for many reasons. It shows that government involvement in media is a waste of time. The government should not be involved in Newspapers, TV or Radio to compete against the likes of Kaieteur News, Stabroek News and other independent media operators. Why aren’t these debates aired on radio across Guyana? Is it not important to get all citizens involved and also to hear about the proud successes of the PPP?
The Budget debates have largely exposed the PPP as being able to find fault in everything the PNC, colonialists and people around the world have done, but when it comes to self-introspection, there is clearly a unique blindness that has afflicted the PPP MPs.
It is abundantly clear that the PPP did not see anything that they did wrong – worthy of apologizing to the Guyanese public for – over the past 20 years of authoritarian and corrupt rule. The PPP MPs were fixated on what Burnham spent and drank when he was in China etc. Clement Rohee lamented that he was beaten outside parliament and dragged to Brickdam, and many of those ranks today are under his Ministry and his command apparently.
He however failed to mention that under his command other MPs have been shot. Mr. Rohee also went at length to indicate to the House that his Visa privileges to the United States has been restored, a momentous occasion no doubt. Jennifer Webster and Anil Nandlall boasted about all the buildings that were being rehabilitated and all the schools that were being built around the country, they also boasted about the great numbers and statistics, none of which were in context, and no additional facts were provided in detail to explain certain behaviors and actions of the PPP, such as the creation of a contractor workforce in the Public Service which is not part of the Public Service Union. The failed, however, to explain why President’s College is in a constant state of disrepair due to lack of funding and is now becoming a national disgrace.
What Nandlall, Rohee, Webster and all the other PPP trumpeters failed to tell us is what have they done to roll back the tools of authoritarianism that Burnham unleashed on the population and that their administration is also guilty of unleashing on the population. They are now telling us that NCN makes its own money and they don’t need money from the budget for NCN. Was that the case the past 19 years? Do Chronicle and GINA also make money and not require funding from the budget? These were all tools of the authoritarianism and they continue to be in support of that without question.
What the PPP also failed to tell the people of this country during these debates is why we are purchasing laptops when our children in school still do not get text books, exercise books and have access to the internet in every single school? Is this not the height of stupidity and incompetence?
Do we build a big castle for a house with no furniture to sit on? Do we buy a Mercedes Benz and cannot afford the insurance or to put gas in the vehicle? This is exactly what the PPP is doing and this is not progress, this is progress in reverse, which is not sustainable and helps no one.
Our people know and can judge the education our children are getting in school and I can assure you the people of this country who are watching the UG saga take place in front of our very eyes will agree about the PPP’s record in education, it is far from perfect.
They have cut the budget to Critchlow Labor College which is an iconic educational institution in this country and GECOM has a bigger budget than UG, but the PPP is now telling us that they have a glorious record in the education sector. UG has the lowest paid lecturers in the region. This was brought up by the top man at UG (who is now leaving the institution) and he has no political axe to grind, he is not Guyanese. So all this fluff and nonsense in parliament is another example of the PPP tooting their own horn loudly as ever and ignoring the voices of the disenchanted which were heard clearly in the November 2011 Elections.
I sometimes wonder if the PPP leaders are clueless. Nandlall stood up in parliament and was trying to state that he can find the historical records of parliament and he doesn’t understand why APNU and AFC parliamentarians cannot find these records. Funny enough, Carl Greenidge to his credit indicated that what Nandlall was reading was his speeches not the hansards – the official records of parliament. Mysteriously these records have disappeared, but the speeches seem to be intact. Is the PPP trying to pull the wool over our eyes and rewrite history? Where have these records gone, this is a sinister development which must be investigated.
Another point that Nandlall made, and I am surprised that no one in parliament objected to it, was that the Government bailed out GuySuCo last year with 4 billion dollars and they are doing so now again and they will do that again in the future if they have to. He went on to say that this happens in America. Well Mr. Nandlall should heed his own advice to fellow parliamentarians about reading. In America, when the banks and car manufacturers are bailed out it is not a ‘freebee’ they have to repay those monies to the tax payers, that is not what is happening with GuySuCo. In America, when the government bailed out the banks and the car manufacturers, many of those CEOs were fired and boards were reconstituted, and CFO’s and entire leadership teams were disbanded – some of them were even prosecuted. Is that happening in our good Guyana? The answer is no.
John. B. Singh

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