The slide downwards and backwards

Sep 05, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News yesterday listed sixteen areas of concern over the government’s performance over the past year. Very few governments in the world have racked up such a large number of slipups and blunders in such a short period of time.
The government seems to lack the ability to call its senior members to account for what have become embarrassments for the ruling coalition. The government wants Guyanese to consider what has happened as mistakes.
Guyanese are not stupid and should not be easily insulted. The government has been a disappointment and this ultimately will be blamed on poor leadership.
The government cannot blame any of the sixteen issues mentioned in yesterday’s edition of the Kaieteur News on the PPPC. The PPPC has had nothing to do with those issues. They are solely of the making of the government and it is therefore the government which is required to ‘pull up its socks’ and to do so swiftly to stem the decline.
The government seems to be stumbling from mistake to mistake. There seems to be no end to its clumsiness in administering the affairs of Guyana. It says the right things but it does, in so many instances the wrong things.
The issue with the rental of the storage bond was only unearthed because the government had to go to the National Assembly for approval of the cost of the security deposit. It was while questioning this spending that certain facts emerged which spiraled into one of the biggest controversies of the new government.
Who knows what lies hidden behind some of the other deals which were not required to go to the National Assembly for approval. For example, it is not yet known just who donated to the works at Durban Park and just how much monies are owed to contractors.
The government promised greater transparency but it has been less than transparent in trying to defend some of its more controversial decisions. The issue of the value of the steel that a private company gained possession of remains a mystery.
The way of deal with such issues would have been for the government to put all the facts on the table but the government seems to be disinclined to doing so.
This is not what was promised. It also cannot be laid at the feet of the PPP because the issue of transparency of the present government has nothing to do with the PPPC.
Why is the government not releasing the contracts it signed? One of its first acts when it came to power was to table in the National Assembly a number of agreements signed by the PPPC when it was in power. What is preventing the government from doing the same?
The government did promise when it was campaigning for office that it would sell the Marriott Hotel because this was a rotten deal by the PPP which would cause the State to lose money.
The government has not yet sold the hotel and seems to want to hold on to it, thereby making it seem as if the PPPC ‘s decision to build the hotel was not as bad as was made out to be by their opponents. Why is the Marriott not yet up for sale?
There has also been no movement on granting television and radio licenses which were denied to entities who had applied and who many felt were the victims of PPPC discrimination. The Broadcasting Authority has not issued a single new license, except for some community radio licenses, since it was established.
Why did the government opt to issue new fuel import licenses. A number of reputable international companies have always controlled the importation of fuel into Guyana. Guyana also has a state owned oil company which ensures that oligopolistic relations do not develop and that consumers benefit from competition.
Why is the government moving then to increase the number of fuel importers, knowing well its weakness in regulating and monitoring this sector? And why did the government not advertise and invite for expressions of interest rather than simply handing out the licenses.
The government is running amok and awry. The left hand does not seem to know what the right hand is doing. Things are sliding backwards and downwards.
Imagine what is likely to happen when the oil revenues come flowing, if they ever do because at the rate the government is going by the time those revenues are ready to be received by Guyana, the PPPC would have regained power.

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