Did Mr. Jagdeo live in Guyana the past twenty three years?

Nov 01, 2015 Letters

Dear Editor,
One must ask whether a special type of political psychosis exist in the universe that leads men who have lost an election to make ridiculous statements about areas of governance where their own record is nothing short of catastrophic. One is referring to former President BharratJagdeo and the APNU-AFC’s clean-up campaign. One is reminded of silly statements made by the PPP on the issue of social cohesion when for 23 years that Party achieved nothing in the area of nation building.
From his utterances (KN 26/10/ 2015).it would appear that fixing the economy and fixing the wretched capital, towns and villages of Guyana are mutually exclusive stages of Guyana’s development. One always assumed that the purpose of economic growth is to improve the quality of life of citizens, not ignore it. Mr. Jagdeo’s dismissive attitude to the rights of taxpayers to public services that protect their health and general well-being is however not surprising at all.
We contend that there is no excuse for denial of basic sanitation services to any population anywhere. Guyanese have been paying taxes since before independence, and those taxes entitle them to services required to be provided by the state. Those services include garbage disposal and the maintenance of a safe and healthy environment for families to carry on their daily lives, and raise their children. But behold, Mr. Jagdeo’s ideology leads him to think that “cleaning” the City, Towns and Villages of Guyana is “expenditure” ( KN 26/10/ 2015). Of course it is, however that is not the point. The state’s obligation to provide basic services to its taxpayers/citizens is at issue.
He proceeds to denounce APNU-AFC for the amount of planned “expenditure” to clean Georgetown. All we can say is that 23 years of decay will cost a lot to repair. The hypocrisy is that his Party allegedly allocated G$ 1 billion ‘expenditure’, the purpose was to clean-up Guyana. Evidently, and given his posture today, this was a political gimmick to fool the electorate. For the duration of his presidency Georgetown was allowed to shamefully decline into a state of absolute squalor. However, the general elections of 2015 was approaching, so that the cost of the so called clean-up by the PPP in 2014 was presumably not “ expenditure”. What should we call it?
Part of his is governance ideology seem to be something like this. Pay your income, consumption, property, capital gains and other taxes, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually as required. The state will collect those taxes and do what it pleases, while your city, towns and villages descend into squalor, because you have to wait for the economy to grow before it can provide you with services, even though you have already paid for those services. You can live daily in filthy conditions, no problem, and one day when the economy is doing well and the state is good and ready it will clean-up.
Mr. Editor, remember, the citizens do their jobs and pay their taxes. The only question for Mr. Jagdeo is how long must Guyanese wait for the state do its job? The things which he picks to make an issue of are so ridiculous that they raise the incredible possibility that he lived somewhere other than Guyana during the past 23 years. Why make an issue of areas of governance where your own record is abject failure? It seems rather dumb.
Ivor Carryl

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Did Mr. Jagdeo live in Guyana the past twenty three years?

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