It is time President Granger start thinking in the right way

Sep 08, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,
The people of Guyana have been the unwitting and unsuspecting victims for the past twenty odd years of all kinds and types of crooked deals in which they were taken for a ride and all at the poor, over burdened taxpayers’ expense. The space allotted in this newspaper will certainly not be enough if one were to seriously chronicle all of these less than transparent business deals in which the state and certain private individuals have been partners in crime – literally that is.
However, the most prominent of these will serve to include the following:
(A) The problems plagued Skeldon sugar factory built by the Chinese.
(B) The Guysuco packaging plant at Enmore.
(C) The overpriced and badly done proverbial road to nowhere constructed by one Fip Motillal and his henchmen as part of the Amaila Falls Project.
(D) The Berbice Bridge which has all the hallmarks of a ‘three card game’ and the machinations of a snake oil salesman which resulted in the near bankruptcy of the National Insurance Scheme.
(E) The disappearance of vast sums from the now defunct Petro-Caribe Fund.
(F) The Marriott Hotel fiasco without proper market feasibility criteria and which is now a huge drag on the tax coffers.
(G) The stillborn specialty hospital in which BK Int’l got compensated with large amounts of steel.
(H) Haags Bosch dumpsite, which is now a carcinogenic waste land that the hapless residents of the surrounding communities must be saddled with. BK made off with a golden parachute thanks to its friends in ‘high places’ and let ‘s not forget the BaiShanLin jet ride.
(I) The BaiShanLin pillage of Guyana.
(J) The China Harbour Engineering Company’s continued and wanton violations of our labour laws, unauthorised cost overruns and theft of raw materials from the private properties.
(K) The Pradoville I & II and other examples of grand theft of state lands in which certain individuals of the former regime have benefitted substantially.
(L) The smuggling of fuel and protection afforded to the culprits by the corrupt members of the system.
(M) The Parking Meter Fiasco at City Hall and the dysfunctional conduct of certain senior citizens within the upper echelons of the City Council.
(N) The recently exposed ‘Warehouse Gate Affair’ in which the Minister of Health is caught misleading the Parliament of Guyana and upon independent verification by the vigilant media – two and two does not add up.
(M) BaiShanLin’s culpability in the reported international trafficking in persons using Guyanese Visas and possibly passports.
Just how much more of this pillage must the poor, overburdened, besieged and beleaguered nation endure before the leadership of this country wake up and smell the coffee. It was the late Hugh Desmond Hoyte that remarked more than once that ‘Enough is Enough and ‘ It was Time to Rescue the Nation’. If the late President Hoyte could bear witness to this lamentable state of affairs –he would literally have collapsed in shock given the rather disastrous excuses that have been offered by none less than several cabinet ministers and whom President Granger has now developed the penchant of defending come hell or high water.
In short, this is no way to run a cake shop, a beer garden or a “bad place” let alone a country and it is high time that this regime whom many have stood extremely loyal to for over twenty three years wake up from its deep slumber and start with the real work in front of it and that is, creating a business friendly atmosphere that is totally devoid of corruption, grafts, kickbacks. I can tell you a thing or two about public perception and frankly the public perception of Guyana is an extremely unhealthy and unhelpful one.
The reputational risks associated with institutionalised grand larceny and corruption is not good for Guyana because it will have an extremely negative effect upon the country as it strives to attract serious, credible foreign direct investments other than Exxon-Mobil and definitely beyond the crooked narrative of the many BaiShanLins in our midst. A word of friendly advice to the powers that be – keep up this charade and see just how far it will get the country or yourselves.
The common person is suffering and the nation really has to wonder if President Granger is really aware of this or is he simply oblivious to their pains and cries of anguish on account of the sagging economy which is barely limping along, thanks to the cyclical gold sector. Rice, sugar, timber and other traditional sectors continue to wobble along before their imminent careening down the abyss of economic disaster ahead and just when oil will flow as President Jagdeo enunciated not too long ago is like ‘waiting for Godot’. One may not agree on much with President Jagdeo but he is absolutely spot on when it comes to the stalled economy.
Minister Jordan must know by now that excessive taxation is not a good mechanism towards stimulating a stalled economy and must move forthwith in debunking all of this crippling Keynesian economic mumbo-jumbo because the state should not be the locomotive in jobs creation etc. It is time to remove all this nonsense coming from the ‘Humty Dumpties’ at the CARICOM Secretariat at Liliendall by exercising the CET waivers on much needed raw material imports, drastically reduce the oppressive VAT and light a fire under the asses of our so called private sector to get them moving rather than wringing their hands in despair about coconut water and tamarind balls from Thailand, roti and curry from Suriname or plantain chips from Jamaica.
The burdensome taxes being exercised by the Ministry of Finance and the GRA upon raw materials must be scrapped and the only tax applied must be on the finished product in the form of a drastically reduced VAT, give incentives to the development of alternative energy such as subsidized solar panels, solar farms etc.
The country needs to adopt the four key policies of:
(A) Sound Money
(B) Low Taxes
(C) Property Rights
(D) Non-Bureaucratic Interference in the running of the Private Sector
The people of Guyana do not need:
(A) Hand outs (such as remittances all the days of their lives)…they need a hand up in terms of jobs generated via foreign and local direct investments, they do not need pity … they need an opportunity have a decent job and work to take care of themselves (live within their means, pay their bills on time and save for a rainy day).
(B) Aid but trade. There are so many trade deals that Guyana has to its advantage such as the Caribbean Basin Initiative, the Caribbean-Canada Free Trade Agreement and course the Caribbean Single Market & Economy but alas all the nation seems great doing in exporting narcotics in the various fruits, vegetables, frozen seafood, chow-mein and other manufactured items… hence no one wants to hear about Guyana.
One can lead a horse to water but cannot force it to drink and the fact remains that even the road to hell was paved with best of intentions. The million dollar question is what is being done to seriously address the impending socio-economic, political and racial consequences that are inevitably going to descend at President Granger’s footsteps? If one were to ask the electorate to seriously rate the existing cabinet – 90% of them will get an F and so it is time for a fresh start and resetting of priorities with predictable outcomes led by competent, capable and committed ministers and we are expecting a serious cabinet reshuffle in no short order.
Walter Wong

1 thoughts on “It is time President Granger start thinking in the right way”

Arthur Young September 8, 2016 at 8:24 am

Don’t forget Harmongate, Bondgate, BKgate, Metergate and all the other gates. These are the gateways to UNhappiness.