Latest update February 13th, 2025 8:56 AM

Guyana's largest selling daily and New York's most popular weekly

Latest News

An open letter to Captain Gerry Gouveia: Does the Captain have a mind of his own?

Aug 16, 2013 Letters

Dear Editor,
I commend Gerry Gouveia for asking in an open letter to the press four prominent critics of the Amaila Falls hydro project, Christopher Ram, Ramon Gaskin, Anand Goolsaran and Dr. Clive Thomas, some critical questions. However, from reading the letter, it is abundantly clear that Gerry Gouveia engages in a grave form of intellectual hypocrisy and heinousness. He highlights and ventilates the opinions and positions of the PPP government and the four individuals but he offers no opinion, view, position, conclusion, research or findings of his own. Gouveia does not contextualize the commentary allegedly made by the four men. Nor does he admit that the public still labours under a cloud of withheld and denied full disclosure and information on this project, something the PPP still persist in doing even in the face of the collapse of this project.
The questions Gerry Gouveia posed are critical and pivotal to the debate on Amaila but they are not the only burning issues on this fiasco. Gouveia selectively and conveniently cherry-picks his four questions while opportunely forgetting to ask other key questions such as on the outlandish financing terms and arrangements agreed to by the PPP government, the suitability of the site itself, future national electricity demand projections, etc. Gouveia’s second question is not really a question. It is a speculative, logically specious and intellectually corrupt attempt to get the four gentlemen to agree to a false premise and conclusion Gouveia himself makes and frames in the form of a question. Unless Gouveia could point the public to a legislated removal of the government’s capability to provide subsidies to GPL as a result of this project, it is absurd to assume GPL will not be subsidised after Amaila Falls came on stream. In fact, the taxpaying public is heavily sudsidizing the entire Amaila Falls project as constituted and in doing so is subsidizing GPL, which is bound by law to take all of its power from Amaila. There is no persuasive evidence that Amaila Falls will lead to reduced GPL fossil fuel dependency based on, among other factors, future national electricity demand and the plan to force massive self-generating entities onto the grid.
Instead of demanding answers from others, maybe Gouveia could in light of recent exchange rate fluctuations that devalued the Guyana dollar, provide us with his numbers of how much the project cost escalated in the past month. Christopher Ram, Ramon Gaskin, Anand Goolsaran and Dr. Clive Thomas did not kill hydro electricity’s best chance in fifty years in Guyana because there is no conclusive evidence that Amaila Falls to begin with was Guyana’s best chance for hydro electricity, and certainly not Amaila as currently packaged. This project killed itself. It was suicidal voodoo economics, catastrophic decision-making, hasty legacy-making egomania and idiocy from Jagdeo and his PPP minions, the arrogant inability to admit failure, an eternal willingness to hold this nation’s head under water for cabalistic self-enrichment and a corrupt, information withholding PPP regime without majoritarian political capital that helped to kill this project. In his letter, Gerry Gouveia has demonstrated the infamous arrogance and brazen manipulation of information that sabotaged this project. Until Gerry Gouveia offers his own opinion and stops parroting the contentions of the PPP government, he is not entitled to any response from these citizens who have done this country a magnificent favour by lending their intellectual prowess to examining the Amaila Falls hydro project.
M. Maxwell

Similar Articles

The Glenn Lall Show|| February, 10th, 2025

Follow on Tik Tok @Glennlall

THE BLUNT OF THE DAY

Sports

Eagles survive shaky start on Rain-affected opening day

Eagles survive shaky start on Rain-affected opening day

Feb 13, 2025

2025 CWI Regional 4-Day Championships Round 3… -GHE (1st innings 87-4) Blades 3-15 Kaieteur Sports-Guyana Harpy Eagles were put on the back-foot early thanks to rain, coupled with a fiery spell...
Read More
TCL hand over trophies for Mashramani Street Football Championships Final

TCL hand over trophies for Mashramani Street...

Feb 13, 2025

Nagassar was re-elected as President of GCUC

Nagassar was re-elected as President of GCUC

Feb 13, 2025

Herstelling and Eccles SC chalk up wins in latest EBDCA/D&R Construction 40-over fixtures

Herstelling and Eccles SC chalk up wins in latest...

Feb 13, 2025

Golden Jaguars CONCACAF home match against Guatemala relocated to Barbados

Golden Jaguars CONCACAF home match against...

Feb 13, 2025

Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport endorses Mashramani Street Football Championships

Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport endorses...

Feb 12, 2025

Features/Columnists

Publisher’s Note

Freedom of speech is our core value at Kaieteur News. If the letter/e-mail you sent was not published, and you believe that its contents were not libellous, let us know, please contact us by phone or email.

Feel free to send us your comments and/or criticisms.
Contact: 624-6456; 225-8452; 225-8458; 225-8463; 225-8465; 225-8473 or 225-8491.
Or by Email: [email protected] / [email protected]

Weekend Cartoon

Bridge Watch

Demerara Harbour Bridge

> Berbice Bridge […]