Singing the Shaggy tune—It wasn’t me

Apr 11, 2015 Editorial

There was a popular saying to emphasise the strengths of a country, in this case, the United States of America. That saying was, “Only in America.” That saying has been used extensively in Guyana. Whenever people talk about an incident that reflects the inadequacies of the country, one would say, “Only in Guyana.”
For example, if the power goes in the midst of an interesting programme or discussion, someone is bound to shout, “Only in Guyana.” The police are summoned to a crime scene while the criminals are in operation. An entire community will call the emergency number and the police will eventually arrive, but only after the criminals walk their merry way from the scene of their exploits. People will react to this by simply proclaiming, “Only in Guyana.”
And so it is that the government keeps blaming the past administration for the failures of the country despite the government being in office for more than two decades.
During the past week, a writer to the letter pages made an interesting observation. Barack Obama acceded to office in 2008, after the Bush Administration had plunged the United States into a recession that threatened the Great Depression of the 1920s.
Banks were collapsing, housing prices had fallen through the floor, there were no jobs and the very future of the country was threatened. Things were so bad that people in this corner of the word believed that they were seeing the end of the great United States, the country that Iraq named the Great Satan.
So it was that Obama came to office. Poor fellow, he could not blame the Bush Administration for the woes that he had inherited although the country was aware of the source of the plight. Obama could not look back six months; in fact, he could not even look back to the performance of his predecessor to apportion blame.
Guyana is a different kettle of fish. Only in Guyana is a political party allowed to look back more than forty years for a reason to remain in office. It was back in 1972 that Guyana was riding the economic peak. Then came the oil crisis of 1973 and things started to affect the economy; more money had to be found to pay for petroleum.
Imports began to cost more and since the export earnings could not match the cost of imports the economy went into a tail spin. It was more than a decade before things began to improve. So here we are today, forty years later being regaled about the economic situation of the 1970s and 1980s.
If Obama was not allowed by the American people and business to look back to three months to blame his predecessor, why must Guyanese allow the current People’s Progressive Party administration to still seek to apportion blame to its predecessor?
It must be that we are a most dishonest people who do not accept blame for our shortcomings. We look to blame everyone else for whatever our problems are. Sugar prices are down and Skeldon has not lived up to expectations. The blame must be placed at the feet of the European Union.
Crime has escalated in this land and there are more guns than there ever was. The PPP administration blames this on the United States which it says sends the deportees back home. The administration does not see its weak law enforcement policies as being contributory factors.
About a decade ago, the then President Bharrat Jagdeo announced that Guyana had lost its skilled potential. They had migrated. For this, the blame went to those countries that could have paid the skilled people better and not to the administration which has a real policy of depressing wages and salaries.
And so, in the run up to the May 11, 2015 elections, the ruling party is going to apportion blame to an administration that demitted office twenty-three years ago, and even then, skipping the period when there was the economic turn around and blaming what happened during the tenure of Forbes Burnham.

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