Revelations – the final book in the Bible

Aug 11, 2013 Features / Columnists, My Column

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Revelations, the last book in the Bible has many prophesies. It talks about the end of the world which experts say is figurative. In Guyana there have been many revelations.
Strange things happen at the worst of times. Sometimes they so shock people that they are left to wonder whether they are awake or dreaming. I remember the time when the Caribbean Airlines craft crashed at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport.
It was the first time since the terminal was constructed some forty years ago that such an incident had occurred there. Of course, just off the airport some people had found the wreck of a World War Two craft that must have crashed in the 1940s. That was some time back.
The strange thing at the time was that the base, Atkinson Field, was a landing site for war-time craft. For this aircraft to crash and to go missing must be something. I found it strange.
The next thing that I found strange was that a group of gunmen could have simply walked into a small community and kill innocent people. Such actions, in my mind, were confined to the sick in some other societies; certainly not Guyana. Of course, I now see that the sickness has reached the Caribbean. Trinidad is a giant mortuary, with people being killed at the rate of almost more than one a day.
I got the biggest shock on Tuesday when I happened to read that Attorney at Law, Nigel Hughes, was the Company Secretary for Amaila Falls Hydro Inc, the local company set up to manage the construction and operation of the Amaila Falls hydroelectric project.
This company, as Mr Hughes was to state in a letter that came the same day Kaieteur News broke the story that he, Hughes, was the Company Secretary, came into existence in 2009. Mr Hughes said that this was public knowledge, but if that was indeed the case then I was not a member of the public; I just did not know.
It may be true that his party, the Alliance For Change, knew of the arrangement and that he did ask not to be involved in any discussion involving the Amaila Falls hydroelectric project. However, while this may be the case at the party level, it was certainly not known by the wider society. What the nation knew was that Winston Brassington established and headed the Amaila Falls Hydro Inc and that his secretary, Marcia Nadir-Sharma was another leader in the company. Many of us thought that it was a two-man company.
So there was everyone challenging the cost of the project and Mr Hughes’s party contributing to the debate, while Mr Hughes simply held an opposing view as Chairman of the party. It is not unusual for leaders in a political party to hold opposing views, but in the end, the views of the majority would take precedence. That is what democracy is about.
I would therefore have thought that since the political party held an opposing view to Mr Hughes, and since Mr Hughes was not prepared to sacrifice his views for the unity of the party, he should have resigned since then. To wait until a newspaper publication of this fact that he is the Company Secretary, suggests that he might have been languishing in the secret knowledge.
However, I respect his decision to resign. In so doing he has stated where his interest lies, and it would be interesting to hear his views on all the confusion that now surrounds the hydroelectric project. For one, money is a prime mover. Mr Hughes has to live, and it is obvious he has chosen to earn over debating about the current feasibility of the project.
Indeed, many people would be disappointed, because it is human nature for people to see things in the light of ‘us’ and ‘them’. Nigel Hughes would now be in the ‘them’ category whenever the discussion is about the Amaila Falls hydroelectric project.
And all this might have passed unnoticed had the price for the project not skyrocketed. I did mention the rising cost of the road, but I hasten to say that when the then President, Bharrat Jagdeo, announced that the cost of the Amaila project would have been US$550 million, the cost of the contract offered to Makeshwar ‘Fip’ Motilall was a factor. In fact, President Jagdeo said that the cost of the road would have been Guyana’s contribution to the project, thus lowering the final cost and the amount Guyana would have had to repay to the borrowers.
One could understand pricing everything, but the government must now tell the nation what it will actually have to pay for the project. We know that money from the Norway funds is going into the project and that the money will not have to be repaid.
The repayment is the sore point. Everyone believes that Guyana would be paying interest on the US$858 million, but this is not the case.
As an aside, I noticed that bandits have been targeting the headquarters of the company scheduled to build the hydro project. The impact of the attacks is left to be seen.

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