APNU’s EXCUSES ARE NOT IN ORDER

Aug 30, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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One of the reasons advanced by A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) for opting out of the “corruption debate series” hosted by the National Communications Network, was that a number of issues that they wanted to discuss were not included.
APNU seems to be missing the purpose of the debate and the opportunity this presents to them. The present series is about corruption and addresses those controversies and institutions towards which the opposition had pointed accusatory fingers in the past. The opposition had the opportunity to prove their case about corruption.
Instead they resorted to what they do best: make excuse after excuse. What we have for an opposition in Guyana is an excuse.
To opt out of the debate series because issues they proposed were not included is an undelivered excuse.
The excuse offered is a red herring. The present series is about corruption. As such discussing the crisis in Linden cannot be included in the present series, but will have to be part of another set of debates. So it makes no sense for APNU to be using this as a basis for ending their participation.
It is very much like someone complaining about not being invited to a party, but when they are invited they refuse to turn up and then claim that they did not attend because the food that was being served was not what they had asked for. It is not for the guest to determine the menu.
It is not for APNU to decide on the topics to be covered in the debate. APNU was invited to deal with a series of debates on controversies and institutions about which they had expressed concerns. They had also claimed in the past that they were not being given adequate exposure on the state-owned television station. Yet presented with the opportunity to make their case, they opted to only do so in one debate, and then said they would not be participating anymore.
So how is it that APNU did not have a problem with the first debate, but now have problems with the others? Is it that APNU cannot muster a case of corruption in relation to the Marriott-branded hotel or in relation to the airport project? Does APNU lack the ability to discuss corruption in relation to these two projects? How is it that the Alliance for Change (AFC) could have gone there and torn the government’s case to shreds?
Better was expected of APNU and their absence from the last two debates was not only inexcusable, but also an abdication of their duty as an opposition party to hold the government accountable.
That failure is being amplified by the position that the main opposition party is taking in relation to the construction of a specialty hospital. APNU seems to have jumped on the AFC’s bandwagon in criticizing the award of a contract to a specific firm from India.
The AFC’s position in turn is not without its own intrigue. It is left to be seen whether all of those who had railed against conflict of interest in relation to appointments in the audit office, will question whether a similar situation exists in relation to the stance taken by the AFC on the specialty hospital. It is left to be seen.
The award of that contract should have been secondary to the more important issue of whether this hospital should be constructed in the first place. This is a hospital that is being built with the support of taxpayers’ funds, which have now been sanctioned by the opposition parties by virtue of them approving the funds for the design of the hospital.
But why build such a hospital which will be a profit-making institution, when the same funds could have been invested in upgrading public hospitals to provide the same services either free of charge or at a significantly reduced cost?
This new hospital will put money into the hands of private health care providers. It is unacceptable that taxpayers’ monies should be used for this purpose when there is the alternative of upgrading the existing public hospitals to provide the specialty services. In short, there is money to be made by the provision of these services and private health care specialists will cash in on the bonanza.
The opposition parties should never be seen as supporting this project that will only strengthen the hands of the new oligarchy in Guyana which is aligned to the ruling party.
Instead of therefore crying foul about which contractor should have gotten the contract, the opposition should be debating the need for that type of hospital in Guyana.
It is also interesting that the opposition is crying foul about the award of a contract under a competitive process, yet is not using this very example to question why a similar process was not applied to the airport project.
The government of India is providing funding for a specialty hospital. As such, Indian companies competed for the award of the contract.
China granted a major loan for the expansion of our national airport. Was there a competitive process involved here? Or was the contractor simply selected by the government? And why was the process so secretive?
Regardless of what the government says, the airport contract was a secret contract, because the people of Guyana were only made aware of it months after the signing, and only after a report was published in a Jamaican newspaper.
These are the issues on which one expected APNU to take the government to task. Instead APNU seems to be fiddling.
Instead of going into the debates and setting the cat amongst the pigeons, by pointing out the obvious flaws of these major contracts which are the subject of the “corruption- debate series,” APNU is opting out of the discussions, and on the most spurious of grounds. We await their next excuse.

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