Political opportunism while an industry collapses

Nov 30, 2013 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
Tony Vieira and E.B. John have done a commendable job putting statistics and cold hard facts about GuySuCo into the public sphere. They have both highlighted the outlandish wage costs of the sugar industry as a serious part of the problem, but they have not delved into why this tragedy persists.
It is actually very simple. It has its roots in racial politics and ethno-political machinations. It is the PPP using taxpayers’ money to buy and retain its voter pool in the sugar belt. The majority of those who work for GuySuCo are PPP supporters. Instead of trying to fix the industry and drive down costs by mechanizing, even in the face of a departing and vanishing workforce no longer interested in slaving in sugar, the PPP has been throwing more and more money at those who remain.
Incidentally, that remaining workforce has become lazier, with turnout and productivity at its lowest levels. So, the PPP is fattening a slothful problem. In addition, the reckless throwing of taxpayers’ money into sugar has created a fat cat class of bloodsucking executives who are living the hog off of taxpayers.
These reported benefits of these executives remind us most tellingly of how utterly mangled GuySuCo has become. So, here we have it – cheap PPP political opportunism practiced solely to hold onto a group of supporters/voters while ignoring the deadly and catastrophic economic tsunami facing the sugar industry.
The misguided minds at Freedom House are only concerned with holding onto power at any cost, and will continue to throw taxpayers’ money at this white elephant.
If we think things are bad now, wait until the EU erases all subsidies for Guyana’s sugar in 2016. The PPP’s response would likely be to throw even more money from taxpayers into propping up its supporters in the sugar belt with economically unsustainable and fiscally unwarranted jobs, just so these people will vote for them. This is as grand a Ponzi scheme as it gets, and come 2016 when the EU drives their nail in the sugar industry’s coffin, some of those same individuals who will vote for the PPP will lose the shirts on their backs.
GuySuCo has become the bauxite industry during the PNC times, when taxpayers’ money was blindly thrown at that industry to prop up jobs for PNC supporters while the industry rotted away and eventually derailed after the PNC lost power. That said, the bauxite industry never faced a looming catastrophe like the end of the EU preferential price for Guyana’s sugar.
When that goes, the entire sugar industry will have to find markets on its own and to compete with lower pricing from countries that have massively increased their production levels in the past 21 years. Because the Jagdeo-Ramotar cabal will not do it due to political exploitation and opportunism, the PPP supporters in the sugar belt have to start asking serious questions of the PPP leadership, because things are going to be economically devastating in the sugar belt come 2016. In fact, the EU preferential pricing cessation and its profound impact in the sugar industry could see the PPP lose power in 2016 due to disillusionment and economic hardship from its own sugar belt supporters and mass migration by these supporters from a collapsed sugar industry to foreign pastures.
M. Maxwell

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