Glenn Lall – Man of the Year for 2013

Dec 29, 2013 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Each year this column selects a local personality who it believes has made the greatest impact – positive or negative – on the country. There is a bias towards those who have played a positive role, whether through a singular act or through a series of actions over a one-year period.

Since its inception, the award has been won by a number of persons, including Chief Justice (ag.) Ian Chang and Dr. Steve Surujbally, for his role as Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission. But the individual who has won this award more than any other since it was inaugurated has been the publisher of Kaieteur News, Glenn Lall.
He is again this year’s choice.
If ever there was an individual who has demonstrated the tenacity, the fearlessness, and the courage to stand up for what he believes in it is Glenn Lall.  In the past, he has won the award for amongst other things his amazing humanitarian efforts in raising millions of dollars for the victims of the East Asian Boxing Day Tsunami, and for his efforts at helping the victims of the Lusignan massacre.
He raised huge sums of money, sums never before raised in this country for these and other causes. Fearful that this would enhance his popularity, those who are opposed to his forthrightness decided that they would no longer permit him to do this public humanitarian fund-raising.
This year he has won the Man of the Year award for his newspaper’s series, ‘The Heist of Guyana’. The series was the brainchild of Glenn and he has been the one who has been meticulously pointing out the interconnections between what were generally seen as unrelated developments.
There has never been an exposé quite like this series.  It has exposed how policies which seemed to have been designed for the benefit of the people were in fact designed to profit a small grouping of cronies of the ruling party.  It detailed how these plans were systematically, and at times unsuspectingly laid, and showed who has benefited from these plans.
The piece on the Berbice River Bridge has exposed the use of public-private partnerships to benefit a small group of investors. These investors, who own less than twenty-five per cent of the shareholding of the Bridge, actually now command the majority of seats on the Board of Directors, a most inexplicable development and one that effectively hands to this minority grouping control of the Bridge.
The NIS, which has the most shares in the Bridge, has less representation on the Board of Directors than other small shareholders. To add to the insult, the small shareholders were never necessary in the first place, since the government could have afforded to fund the Bridge itself. But bringing them on Board was a means of constructively handing over control of the Bridge to them.
The NIS will probably in due course sell its shares in the Bridge and one need not ask who will get the preference to buy these shares, thereby handing over total ownership of what was supposed to be a public asset to a group of private investors.
Another installment in the series ‘The Heist of Guyana’ concerned the lucrative telecommunication spectrum. The column has exposed how the groundwork for handing out licences to select individuals was laid and how friends and cronies of the ruling administration were gifted with the lion’s share of both new television and cable licences, thus placing in their hands not just a lucrative resource, but also the capacity to get a head-start over the competition, and to use that control to influence the minds of citizens.
The Heist of Guyana has been an eye-opener. And it is a kind of monument to the insights of Glenn Lall, because he had predicted what was going to happen. He had long seen the shenanigans over the telecommunication sector, the Marriott Hotel Project and the Berbice River Bridge, and he had long been forewarning the public of their ramifications.
The fact that he has won the Peeping Tom Award for Man of the Year on so many occasions over the past ten years shows the impact that he has in Guyana. Yet for all his efforts, he has been vilified and demonized in sections of the media. There are former friends and associates of his, including those whom he considers as Brothers, who refuse to even say a simple “Hello” to him because they are either afraid of being victimized or ashamed of their own inaction.
He has stood up like the true lion to the onslaughts that were launched at him. He has withstood public vilification. He has taken it all and become stronger.  His faith has served him well in this regard.  He has always believed that he was put on this Earth for a purpose and that no matter what the consequences are, he will be true to that purpose of making a difference in the life of others and in the country.
The Peeping Tom Column is once again pleased to announce that Guyana’s Man of the Year for 2013 is none other than Glenn Lall, the publisher of Kaieteur News.

 

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