Mr. Gill says we’re doing great; I want him to show me that using legitimate statistics

Feb 24, 2015 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I am responding to a letter from Harry Gill in the KN of 21st February 2015 captioned “Over the years, I’ve tried to right a wrong and to recognize and support the PPP/C for good governance”. He is not only is speaking out of the other side of his mouth as Punti Persaud alleges, I am saying that he is speaking out of the top of his head.
As far as the schools, the roads, the improvement in banking etc. which he sees, he conspicuously neglects to point out that it was Desmond Hoyte and Dr. Kenneth King who started the Economic Recovery Programme [ERP] and a national movement to economic liberalization in the early 1990s. Benefits became immediately evident.
Up to 1997, Guyana’s economy grew at an average rate of 7.1 percent and fiscal and external deficits were reduced. State-owned enterprises were privatized [Hoyte]; import substitution policies were abolished [Hoyte], and the government increased spending for poverty reduction [Hoyte] {IDB report}
That Desmond’s Hoyte’s ERP carried Guyana well into the late nineties is a fact. We have never grown at 7.1 percent since. It is widely held by our financial pundits that the PPP caused us to lose the momentum of the ERP by 1999.
Unfortunately, however, according to the IDB, “a drop in foreign investment caused by political unrest contributed to a sharp decline in the annual growth rate, which averaged 0.3 percent from 1998 to 2005. Added to that, a disastrous flood in 2005 wiped out 60 percent of Guyana’s production and affected a great deal of the country’s infrastructure”.
What about the PPP’s Empty Rice Pot strike in the sugar industry for more than 130 days to protest the ERP in 1989? The fact that up to today the PPP has never negotiated anything in good faith with the opposition – the Herdmanston Accord, the Dialog, the Communiqué, the Linden agreements – is the reason that it cannot be allowed to rule without protest.
In this context, protest does not have to take the form of large numbers of people marching and giving the PPP the opportunity to make mischief – the small protests which we have seen recently are just as effective and less fearful to the population.
What caused all of this unrest after 1992? Was it the PPP’s attempt to rig the 1997 elections? I think that it was, and protest was necessary since the PPP does not respond to anything else except protest.  Justice Claudette Singh ruled that whilst the evidence before her did not establish outright fraud, it was enough to invalidate the election results, and called for a new election in 2001, two years before the prescribed period.
Up to today the PPP continues to rig elections. In 2011, less than a week before the elections, they changed where people had to vote and suddenly the homes of known PPP activists were used as polling stations. They illegally and blatantly used the government’s assets to campaign in elections in violation of our laws.
They made Election Day a holiday in 2006 so that minibuses would not be available to transport people who turned up miles away from home to vote, only to be told that they had to go miles in the opposite direction. They are doing this even though they have very wealthy supporters compared to the opposition who have been deliberately impoverished so that they cannot finance an adequate mobilisation to challenge the PPP.
This man Gill is telling me that the Marriott is evidence of growth! Which Guyanese will benefit from it? What about the sugar industry? Is the Skeldon Factory evidence of growth? What about the waste of money on the Hope Canal? The Amaila Hydro project? What about GPL which continues to butcher the Guyanese people with high tariffs and poor service, and which has been a major impediment to the functioning of the manufacturing and value added sectors?
What about the collapse of the NIS; the failure to get us a deep water harbour, a proper road to Lethem, a hydropower facility at Tortuba, even though the Brazilians have been begging for 20 years to let them partner with us to put these in place? What about the fact that Hoyte had Paranapanema here building the road to Brazil, which was stopped by the PPP? What about his plan to privatise GEC, now GPL?
So today we still have no economic ties with Brazil, which in the 23 years since 1992 has moved itself from among the relatively poor countries to an economic superpower, chasing Great Britain to occupy the number six spot in the world. The people who did this to us, i.e. the PPP, sooner than later will have to answer for it, because it is the direct result of corruption and bad governance.
What about the endless flooding of our city and agricultural areas, almost monthly, acting as a deterrent to agricultural activities? And the losses to private citizens? Where do people like Gill get the nonsense they write? These people make up their facts! They are entitled to their own opinion, but they are not entitled to their own facts.
I am not even going to say anything about the escalation of the trafficking in persons, the drug trade and money laundering, I don’t think that I have to, these are the only areas where we have made much progress.
Then we come to the lies. Guyana’s poverty index the last time we gave information to the World Bank in 1996 was that 8.7% of us were living on less than $1.25 US per day and 18.02% were living on less than $2 US a day, and that 35 percent of our population in 2006 were living below the poverty line.
We are, however, at the top of the list in a few categories. We are number one in the world with suicides. We are in the top 15 places on the planet where you can be murdered. According to a report released by the United Nations and the World Health Organisation, which examines the homicide rate in countries, Guyana ranked number 15 with 20.2 murders for every 100,000 persons. This means that there are only 14 nations on this planet where it is more dangerous to live than Guyana.
Corruption? We are ranked 124 out of 175 countries with a score of 30 out of 100 – so we are a failure in doing business because of the level of corruption in this country. Despite this, Gill says that he sees progress everywhere!
Gill tells us that our life expectancy increased from 62 in 1992 to 66 in 2012. The fact is that because of advances in medicine it increased everywhere during that time, but how do we fare when compared to our neighbours? In Suriname the life expectancy is 74.5, Barbados is 78.5, Trinidad 74.8, Jamaica 74.8. There is nothing here to inspire confidence in our health care delivery.
Of special concern is our infant mortality rate. Everywhere its improving, from the 1950’s to 2010 e.g. Suriname improved from 89.25 deaths per 1000 births in the 50’s to 28.68 in 2010, Jamaica improved from 91 to 26.81 in the same period and Trinidad improved from 75.96 to 26.57. Guyana improved from 118 to 41.73 – almost double anywhere else in the Caribbean.
Mr. Gill says that we’re doing great; I want him to show me that using legitimate statistics, and not jumbie statistics and lies. Everything I have used here comes from Wikipedia, the IDB and the World Bank, not some trumped up science fiction garbage produced by Ashni Singh and Jagdeo.
We are in election mode, and I will be brutal and relentless with these people who produce lies to fool the Guyanese people.
Now we come to debt. We did have a big debt in 1992, but after the 1992 elections almost all of this debt was forgiven as we can see from this quote from an IDB article: “The IDB is the country’s principal creditor. Through a debt agreement with the IDB, Guyana was relieved of 100 percent of its debt on outstanding loan balances as of December 31, 2004, from the IDB’s Fund for Special Operations (FSO). Total relief granted to Guyana was $467 million”.
It is my understanding that the PPP has racked up as much debt as the PNC – according to a report by the IDB, “as at end of June 2014, Guyana’s total external public debt stood at US$1.23 billion”. The local debt the PPP government has racked up is also unacceptably high. And every economical commentator, including Christopher Ram and Professor Clive Thomas, has been disputing the inflated and unrealistic economic growth rates which the government of Guyana has been pedalling.
The Bank of Guyana has now come up with a new atrocity to fool us. They are using the 2006 year as the benchmark year to show us how well we are doing. 2006 is the year after the cumulative effects of two years of long term disastrous floods in 2004 and 2005, so instead of showing that in 2013 the output, for example, of bananas was only 5.2 tonnes when compared to 18.6 tonnes in 2000, they are now showing that it was 78.3% of the 2006 production of 6.8 tonnes, but in fact, when compared to the 2000 figure of 18.8 tonnes, it is only 27%. This is a reasonably good example of the jumbie and voodoo statistics and economics.
Tony Vieira

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