THE PARTIES SHOULD MEET

Jun 23, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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APNU is a national party. Like the PPPC it contested every administrative region in Guyana during the 2011 polls.
It did particularly well in Region Ten regaining much of the ground that it had surrendered in the 2006 elections when it only secured one of the two regional seats in an area which has long been regarded as its stronghold.
The AFC was buoyed by its 2006 showing in RegionTen and was no doubt hoping to do better in last year’s elections. The PPP was also hoping to do well in that Region of which Linden is the centerpiece.
Both the AFC and the PPP however took a thumping in Linden and in Region 10 in the 2011 elections. APNU swept all of the seats.
But APNU support was not confined to Linden. It did credibly nationwide with considerable improvements over its 2006 performance being recorded in Region Four where the bulk of the national population resides.
Linden however seems to be a little special to APNU and as is now evident, APNU seems to be prepared to allow the agenda of Linden to so dominate to the extent of disadvantaging the rest of the population.
During the Budget debates, the government signaled that it would have to reduce the heavy subsidies that are applied for electricity in that town. So heavy were the subsidies that not only was electricity cheap, it was almost a giveaway. As a result, the household consumption was three times the national average. This clearly shows that because the electricity was so cheap, there was only limited conservation taking place.
It was only when the government took this decision that the rest of the country fully understood just how much the government was discriminating in favour of the people of Linden.
The extent of the favoritism showed to Linden was reflected but confined to the price paid for the electricity with households paying as little as $15 per kilowatt, which was less than one-third that which was being paid by citizens in other areas.
On top of this, the government revealed that each household was being subsidized for electricity alone to the tune of about $200,000 per year.
Some poor families do not earn this amount in most parts of the country. Yet here was the government positively discriminating in favor of the people of Linden to this extent per household.
Linden has been the pampered community in Guyana under the PPP. It has never been a depressed community. For years, the government kept jobs afloat in the bauxite industry by doling out billions each year. It has invested billions more in infrastructure in that community, including roads, a new housing scheme, a technical institute and a hospital.
It successfully negotiated a two-billion-dollar project with the European Union to promote investments in the advancement of Linden.
On a per capita basis, Linden is perhaps the most subsidized community ever in the history of this country and has benefited more in terms of investment per capita than any other part of Guyana.
There are areas far poorer than Linden which the opposition PNCR had in its dialogue process with the PPPC classified as depressed communities.
When it comes to electricity, these depressed communities are paying on average three times what the people of Linden are paying. It is simply not fair to these communities. It is simply not fair to the rest of Guyana that they should be paying more than $50 per kilowatt hour while the people of Linden pay $15. This is discrimination against the rest of the country.
It is also not fair that bauxite pensioners should be paying $5 per kilowatt up to the first 50 kilowatt when other pensioners throughout Guyana are paying the normal tariffs.
The economic situation in Linden cannot also be an excuse because there are numerous communities in far worse shape than Linden and many communities have not been pampered the way Lindeners have been by the PPP/C administration.
One, however, understands where APNU and the AFC are coming from by trying to stop the government from increasing electricity tariffs. Both parties have congresses coming up soon. Persons within those parties are vying for leadership and they want to be seen as being supportive of important constituencies in the mining town.
But what about the rest of the country? Are the interests of electricity consumers in the rest of the country as important as that of the people of Linden?
When APNU was negotiating with the PPPC Government before the AFC made its foray into Linden and scared the living daylights out of the leadership of APNU, there was progress made on the issue of electricity tariffs. Then the AFC jumped in to the talks and upturned the talks about the Budget.
No one is saying that the people of Linden should suddenly be burdened with an astronomical hike in electricity tariffs. The government is also not proposing this.
The government is saying that there will be a phased increase in tariffs as the high subsidies are reduced.
APNU as a national party should have no problems with the principle of unifying electricity tariffs. It should also have no problem with each household in Linden enjoying a subsidy equivalent to the average subsidy per household or per kilowatt which is enjoyed by the rest of the country.
It should also have no problem with the people of the mining town enjoying further reductions if their cost of generation is less than the national average and if the technical losses are less than the national average.
APNU should also have no problems with the principle that electricity rates should be hiked incrementally so as to cushion the effects on the people of Linden.
What will unacceptable is if the position is adopted that the people of that town cannot bear any increase at all.
Once there is agreement on these principles, the only question to be settled should be the specifics as to how the hikes are to be implemented.
There are political issues shadowing this issue and the government has to understand that APNU has to be seen as coming out with some victory out of this process. This victory however cannot be at the expense of consumers in other parts of the country.
The government therefore should approach APNU and the AFC to agree on the principles that should inform the removal of the subsidies and to jointly reach an agreement on how the tariffs in Linden are going to be unified with the rest of the country.
If APNU and the AFC are however saying that there should be no unification of tariffs, then there cannot be any basis for talks because it would mean that reason has been thrown out of the window and these parties are simply playing politics.
But once APNU and the AFC can agree that there is a need for unification of tariffs and a phasing out of subsidies that are higher than the national average; if they agree that Lindeners should enjoy the benefits of any efficiency gains in their power generation that is better than the national average; then a mutually agreeable arrangement can be arrived at by the parties.
What the Donald Ramotar administration has to understand when it is dealing with APNU and the AFC is that they want to be seen as being part of major policy decisions. They have long felt left out and abandoned from the decision- making process.
They want to be involved and more so since coming up soon is the fact that many of them are facing electoral competition within their parties. There is no reason why there should be a dog fight over this issue. The parties should meet and hammer out a deal on this one.
The principles are straight forward; it is just the mechanics that need to be agreed upon.

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