Latest update January 11th, 2025 3:38 AM
May 03, 2015 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
I am not worried about the fact that at the most inappropriate hour the government signed a contract for repairs and future maintenance of the ICT cable that is being run from Brazil. I am not worried about the fact that the contract gives rights to the cable to the contractor that will undertake repairs and maintenance.
I am not worried for a number of reasons. Firstly, we have had similar arrangements before. A private company is maintaining one of our interior roads for which they are being allowed to charge certain tolls. It is an arrangement that is working fairly well. Also in the past, the government had lent money to the Princess Hotel in return for services which the hotel provided.
Secondly, and more importantly, I am not worried because I do not expect this contract to be consummated. If the combined opposition wins the elections, this contract will be annulled. If the PPPC wins, I do not expect that they will proceed further with this ICT cable, because I believe that the contractor concerned is not going to secure a joint venture partner to make use of the cable. It is just too much money involved for any investor to risk for a cable which has to be laid over rough terrain and for the sort of services that have to be provided.
Thirdly, I am not worried about this contract because I had long anticipated that the ICT project would not materialize. When everyone was getting excited about the possibilities of this project, one man had from the inception seen right through the problems that this project would encounter. One man had predicted that rights to the cable would end up in private hands. One man had seen through the government’s plans.
One man saw it all coming. It was not the Peeper. One man spoke about it and predicted what would happen. That man was Glenn Lall.
He had made some predictions also about the Marriott Hotel and people are now seeing what he was talking about. The months ahead will witness what he was saying all along: that this hotel will run into financial problems and have to be auctioned. It will end up in the hands of the oligarchy.
The mistake that is being made by the opposition parties and other critics of the ruling party is that they are blaming the government for a lot of these controversial projects and contracts that are being signed. They are blaming the government. But the government is merely an instrument of powerful interests.
And it is not Peeping Tom that wrote the gospel on that. It was a man named Karl Marx. It was Marx who had stated that the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class. Behind the grand schemes of the PPP are vested interests at work, powerful and rich interests.
If the opposition gets in, certain vested interests will also be calling the shots. This is why the ideology of the political parties is important to voters. It is important because it indicates in whose interests these parties will act. When one reads the manifesto of the opposition coalition, there is a section about the coalition’s philosophy. It makes no radical departure in terms of class interests, and therefore all one can assume is that if there is a change in government come May 11, one set of rich and powerful interests is going to be replaced by another. This is called exchange. So whoever wins the elections, I do not expect that recently signed contract for the repairs and maintenance of the ICT cable to go anywhere.
The contract is an attempt by the government to show that it is trying to remedy the problems that have developed. Those problems are serious problems. However, the real issue that people should be concerned about is the contract itself, but the initial conceptualization of this project.
This ICT project from day one has been couched in vagueness. No one has yet explained clearly just what services this ICT project is going to provide. We hear about E- governance, but when everyone felt that this was a means of linking government agencies to each other electronically, we learn that this is not what it is about. When everyone felt that this E-governance is about people doing business with government online, we learnt that this is not what it is about.
You ask the average man what this ICT cable will do and he or she does not have a clue. This is the main problem with this project. The people are not clear what benefits it will bring to them.
One man, however, who has always been clear about what this ICT project is about, was Glenn Lall. He has always said that the cable will end up in the hands of vested interests. With each passing day, he is being proved correct.
Jan 11, 2025
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