State institutions in the reign of Bharrat Jagdeo

Nov 20, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

As time turns the pages of the book of the PPP Government, the more graphic is the picture of the Jagdeo disaster. As the sun is about to set upon the National Insurance Scheme, you can’t help think of the irony of the life of past President Forbes Burnham and the paradox of the Champion of the Earth
If Mr. Burnham was not struck with the lust for power and belief in absolute power, he would have taken his place not only as a great Caribbean leader but one of the best in the entire post-colonial world. It was Burnham that gave Guyanese the National Insurance Scheme. The headquarters sits about two minutes walk from where I was born; it reminds one of the patriotic instincts of Burnham. It was built not with imported cement but our own clay bricks.
Only a stupid mind would deny the priceless value of the NIS. To sugar workers it is a permanent source of income. But can the NIS remain alive?
Mr. Jagdeo, the leader whom sugar workers elected as the President of Guyana in two general polls, until 2011, has done a number on the NIS. He spent the NIS money totaling more than eight billion dollars. Six billion dollars into investment in CLICO and is now lost. Another two billion dollars went into building, in my opinion, the worlds’ cheapest and ugliest bridge, the Berbice Bridge (crossed it a few weeks ago to speak to members of a new union on their horrible mistreatment by a German company as part of Rusal operations).
The amount of money the NIS has lost will not be easy to replace, may never be replaced and may soon kill off the NIS. By the time sugar workers drive the final nail in the coffin of the PPP, the workers themselves may starve to death in their old age because NIS may not be around to subsidize their old age.
With an economy like this, with retirement age in the public service being 55, and with a substantial percentage of self-employed not contributing to the NIS, any analyst will tell you the sun will soon set on the NIS.
For last year, NIS operated with a huge deficit. It may worsen in 2012, get disastrous in 2013 and limp to death in 2014 .As we are on the topic of Mr. Jagdeo and the NIS and as we mentioned the self-employed, we need to remind you that a businessman friend of Mr Jagdeo was charged by the police for preventing NIS inspectors from examining his books. The story of NIS is the tale of the failure of the fifth executive president of Guyana (Sam Hinds was fourth but he is a mere statistic in Guyanese history).
In 2011, while he was President, the NIS operated with a deficit. By what standard can you judge this man as a successful president? The NIS is as priceless a State institution as any in Guyana. For the NIS to be facing dissolution is a terrible indictment of Bharrat Jagdeo. But does the PPP care?
In many seminar presentations at UG and at academic conferences, I have argued that there are fundamental differences in the philosophical conceptualization of nationalism between the African middle class which took control of the administration of the country after Independence and the Indian propertied strata.
The African middle class is congenitally a group of people wedded to the State. They see the existence of their class as being coterminous with the State.
Because of the contractual nature of indentureship, Indian saw the State as an intrusion into the life of private entrepreneurship. They are not State-oriented people.
The NIS is not the only public sphere that is facing collapse. No one will be so stupid to say that UG is in any shape whatsoever. The public school system is in a mess. Not most but all the prestigious private schools have a long waiting list. Parents know they have to bite the bullet and provide their children with a good primary and secondary education and they will not get that at public schools.
Any statistical analysis of Mr. Jagdeo’s rule would reveal a substantial decline in the quality of delivery of most public institutions. A horror story awaits you at the record-keeping system of the High Court and the registry of births and deaths. No one in this country would give a passing grade to the Georgetown Hospital.
Public infrastructure from roads, to sea defence to drainage and irrigation, to market facilities, to public parks to traffic lights, the public ownership of Guyana has had a terrible performance under Mr. Jagdeo.

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