Jagdeo is a curse on the country –APNU+AFC

Mar 15, 2015 News

---

– “Everything he and his administration undertook has the shadow of corruption hanging over them”

Former President Bharrat Jagdeo recently lambasted several members of A Partnership for National

Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) for what he believed to be unfounded criticisms from the opposition camp against the government over the years.
He had singled out APNU+AFC Presidential Candidate, David Granger, and Prime Ministerial Candidate, Moses Nagamootoo, APNU Shadow Minister of Finance, Carl Greenidge and APNU General Secretary, Joseph Harmon.
The former President, during a press conference at Freedom House, chided the opposition for accusing the government of a lack of accountability. He said that it is the opposition that is guilty of such a charge.
Jagdeo even lashed out at the APNU+AFC for their challenges to Government’s development projects without putting forward its own alternatives.
But the opposition has responded to what it says are Jagdeo’s ‘careless’ remarks.
Granger told Kaieteur News that the former President has a tendency to linger in the past but the APNU+AFC is a forward looking coalition.
He said that the party wants to assure citizens that they will have a bright future under a new government and would advise Jagdeo to put emphasis on the future.
“Unfortunately he has been involved in a number of economic projects which have jeopardized the future of young people. Money has been wasted so I am not really interested in what he has to say. What he needs to do is use whatever influence he has to correct the mess he created.”

His Shadow Minister of Finance, Carl Greenidge, had even sharper retorts. Greenidge had also been heavily criticized by Jagdeo who said that the opposition member lacked accountability during his tenure as Minister of Finance.
The APNU executive member said that it is opportune that the former President’s comments follow the erroneous and ridiculous comments by Winston Brassington regarding the status of NICIL and its accountability.
He reminded that in 2012 when Resolution 15 was passed by the National Assembly, the Minister of Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh, had not laid audited accounts for NICIL since 2007. Greenidge said too that today, the last accounts laid are for 2012.
The APNU Shadow Minister of Finance said that Dr. Singh and Jagdeo overlook this and dwell on what happened in 1992 for which the PPP is not without blame.  In 1993, he asserted that the People’s Progressive Party/ Civic (PPP/C) took a deliberate decision for political purposes to discontinue the reconciliation of accounts for the period 1985 to 1991.
“The national accounts were sacrificed to that political end,” he added.
The former Finance Minister said that in auditing; it is undesirable to allow accounts to fall behind because it becomes difficult to come up to date.
Greenidge explained some of the challenges he encountered when he served as Finance Minister.
“The accounts seriously fell behind in 1970 prior to my accession to the position of Minister of Finance in October 1983. Due to difficulty with the computerization of the Ministry’s accounts using an early machine from International Business Machines Corporation and the late auditing of the Gold account held at the Embassy in NY, the entire process of closing accounts each year was derailed. Some 10,970 accounts could not be laid until 1979.
Efforts were made to bring them up to date but just as has been the case with NICIL; unless the previous year’s accounts are closed, the following year could not have an opening balance. In spite of the best efforts problems with the computerization complicated matters.
So in 1992 the accountants started from zero as it were, not as a result of PPP accession to office but as a result of administrative and accounting decisions accepted by me. When the People’s National Congress demitted office in the last quarter 1992, a team was still working on bringing the accounts up to date for the period 1985 to 1992.
“But whilst I was in office they completed and submitted statements as recommended by the task force for the years 1975 to 1985.”
Greenidge stated that only the PPP can explain why that work was terminated and why the records disappeared along with those of the debates in the House for the Hoyte years.
The politician said, too, that for Jagdeo to suggest therefore that he was somehow culpable for the late accounts or that he was part of a process of hiding Government failures or misdemeanours is farcical.
Unlike any other Minister of Finance in Guyana’s history, Greenidge said that his reports have been very candid and critical where appropriate.
He added, “The accuracy of those reports has withstood the test of time. That cannot be said of either Jagdeo or Dr. Singh’s terms.”
The financial point man for the APNU also said that there has never been a single case of him spending illegally or facilitating the economic advancement of his relatives and friends by misappropriating state resources.  On the other hand, Greenidge said that the reports on public accounts have revealed persistent law-breaking and misuse of state funds.
“The Minister of Finance and the government have not only failed to do anything about it, they have sought to justify their illegal behaviour. In that sense Mr Jagdeo’s behavour in particular has been a curse on the country. He has given the President’s imprimatur to wrong doing and has spawned an orgy of corrupt transactions which Dr. Singh and the Attorney General undertake and treat as a virtue although they involve breaking the law and infringing the Constitution.
It is this behaviour which has led us to the first Government being brought down without the aid of outsiders or of circumstances of communal riots and disorder.”
As far as the development projects are concerned, the Opposition member said that the Government has itself to blame for the technical failures and glitches that the government has been subjected to. He said the fact that both Jagdeo and President Donald Ramotar can bemoan the blockage of these projects points to the total contempt and disregard they have for honesty and probity in the use of public funds.
“Everything Jagdeo and his administration undertook has the shadow of corruption hanging over them,” said Greenidge.
On that basis, he reminded of the failed $200M Skeldon plant, the brazen gifting of radio licences to family and friends, and the implementation of a plan to take over the telecommunications sector. He then pointed to the fact that Government went ahead with the Specialty Hospital even though it was warned by the opposition.
The decision, he said, saw the contractor carting away millions of taxpayers’ monies without providing the services.
“If Jagdeo wants to talk about the lack of accountability then he needs to talk to the man in the mirror. Without a doubt he is the embodiment of that which he accuses others of.”
He said, too, that Jagdeo should note what a Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, an otherwise sympathetic agency to the PPP Government, has to say about his legacy to Guyana.
“Jagdeo has failed during his presidency to advance the freedom and fairness of Guyanese public life, or the inequities of the Indo-Guyanese dominated society, increased economic growth is futile if it does not translate into a greater sense of prosperity within the entirety of society.
“Jagdeo’s two-term presidency fell woefully short on that point.”

---

---