SELL- OUT OF THE NATION’S INTEREST

Sep 23, 2013 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The Alliance for Change has urged that a national award be granted to Chartered Accountant Mr. Christopher Ram, no doubt for the insights that he has been providing concerning some of the major contracts of the PPPC government which were conceived under the Jagdeo administration.
Well, if Christopher Ram deserves a national award, then Glenn Lall, the publisher of this newspaper, deserves to be named as a national hero. Glenn Lall has done more than anyone else, in fact more than everyone put together to expose the rascals that are fleecing this country and its taxpayers.
Everything that is now being exposed in the media about the Marriott Hotel, Glenn Lall predicted. From day one, he said that the whole exercise was intended to hand over this hotel to friends of the administration. From the very inception he said that government would eventually ditch ownership of the hotel. He said it was rotten and stank to the heavens. He warned that this hotel would not be feasible and was a scheme to benefit the friends of the ruling administration.
He kept saying it all along that this project should not go ahead because it will rip this nation off. Today the wisdom of Glenn Lall has come to light. Everything that he predicted would occur has happened.
The nation now faces the task of ensuring that this project goes no further because it is now clear that what Glenn was saying all along, that this project is intended to use state resources to fatten the goose of private investors has come to pass. Take a bow Glenn Lall! Take a bow!
It is unconscionable, unacceptable, and unpardonable that billions of taxpayers’ dollars have been ploughed into this Marriott Hotel Project and today we are being told that an investor investing a mere US$8M will enjoy a 67% share in the company. An investor with a mere US$8M out of US$58M will own a controlling interest. How more barefaced can things be?
It is the Atlantic Hotels Inc. that will have to decide which investor will become the commanding owner of this hotel by investing a mere US$ 8M when taxpayers who would have put some US$19M, or close to two and one half times what that private investor will invest will only control a minority share. This is a high –rise rip off that is taking place and it is rip- off of you and me, the tax payers of this country.
It is a sting that will put money into the pockets of whoever AHI decides will be the investor. So for US$8M, whoever AHI chooses will get control of a US$ 58M hotel. This is a sellout and therefore financial closure must not take place.
Glenn Lall, you saw it from the start! You warned everyone. Some took you seriously and kept up the fight to ensure there was transparency and accountability. But some also said “Oh, Glenn has his agenda!” Now they are all seeing what you were saying all along. Take a bow Glenn Lall! Take a bow!
Not content to shaft this nation by handing over controlling interest to a minority investor, the AHI is also engaged in “eyepass” against this nation by having the temerity to admit that for the US$15M that will be lent by taxpayers to complete this hotel- which is being constructed without so much as Guyanese shovel man on the construction site- will be done without any interest being paid for the three billion Guyana dollars in taxpayers monies that will be injected to build the hotel.
And as everyone expects since this hotel is likely to end up being a white elephant, it will mean that the other US$4M that is invested in equity will not be recouped whenever a forced sale of the assets has to take place.
Donald Ramotar has to squash this project immediately and he has to immediately also fire those individuals who were the masterminds and orchestrator of this project. They must not sit another day in their offices. They must go and go immediately! Not a day more must they spend administering the affairs of this country. They must go and go now!
If Donald Ramotar, a most decent and honorable man, does not do this, the opposition has to make it known to all potential investors in this project that the opposition parties will not be recognizing the legitimacy of this project and will be taking steps after any future government to recover what is owed to the Guyanese people and to send those who would have invested in this project packing from whence they came, and send them back- handed.

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SELL- OUT OF THE NATION’S INTEREST

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