The Government’s balance sheet is woeful

Oct 01, 2016 Letters

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Dear Editor;
Guyana is now in free fall. From the teachers to the police; from the nurses to the City Hall employees and Councilors, the country has just about ground to a halt. Granger is saying that he has nothing to do with rice. Sugar is dead! The youths who supported the Coalition have been kicked to the side and trampled upon by the military dinosaurs. There are no plans for employment and crime continues to dominate in every region of the country. The only persons who are happy right now are the government Ministers, the retired military come-backies and those of the BK ilk – those who are allowed to continue to have excessive access to the coffers of the Guyanese tax payers.
The country – because of its protracted and perpetuated hopelessness – continues to bleed from daily suicides, even as the politicians shuttle around in their government issued, air-conditioned, SUV’s, on their fat cat salaries, waiting for oil money. The Opposition is laughing at the Government because after all the corruption proven; there have not been any arrests or convictions. Something stinks to the high heaven in the manner in which the Government is functioning and only Granger, Harmon, Jagdeo and Rohee seem to know what is happening. Imagine, the Government is going to spend billions to level and prepare former sugarcane fields in preparation to plant rice. Yes.
The same government which cannot manage what they already have been entrusted to manage, is now going to take on the management of rice. Someone who has the equipment to do the leveling and preparing of the sugar fields (and we all know who he is), has convinced the inept Government to spend billions in converting the lands into rice fields. Already private rice farmers are not selling their paddy. The United Republican Party (URP) has been visiting the rice farmers in Essequibo and Berbice and we have seen, literally, billions of dollars in paddy stacked to the ceilings in hundreds of barns across the Country. Now the Government will be planting and selling rice.
Can anyone hazard a guess as to whose rice the Guyana Rice Marketing Board will sell first? And to think that many of the rice farmers switched from the PPP to the AFC in order to give this Coalition a chance. The URP is convinced that this is not about rice. This latest move by the Government is to further enrich a few of the cronies of the Coalition. But like everything else, nothing will stop them from proceeding with their plans to use the tax payers’ money in all-out efforts helping the bank accounts of their loyal business buddies.
This is PPP tactic 2.0. The United Republican Party is also watching to see the unfolding of the wage talks. Imagine the Government pledged that they will engage the Unions in Collective Bargaining, yet they have undermined the wage discussions with an arbitrary percentage; that they began the talks with. Where is the ‘bargaining’ if you came into the discussion with a figure and left with that exact figure, unchanged?! What the URP is really watching to see is if the Unions will roll over and play dead, like they did under the PPP. The Unions are made up mostly of folks who support the Coalition. The Coalition told their supporters that a new day will dawn if the government changed. Their supporters went out early and in droves to make sure the government changed. Now let’s see if the Union bosses will take the usual position that some have argued is a “sell-out”. Are some of the Union bosses still for sale? Finally, the Minister of Communities, Mr. Bulkan, said that Royston King and Her Lordship the Mayor Pat Green, acted illegally in removing the vendors from Robb Street. What the Minister did not say is what disciplinary measures he will initiate against his subordinates.
After all, the King is only there because the Minister put him there. The URP believes that it would be a travesty of justice and a very unfair act to have Mr. King escape this without any repercussion. Imagine the dozens of families that Mr. King has hurt financially. Think of the untold damage he would have done to the livelihood of these many vendors. Is it fair that one man, backed by a clueless Mayor, should reap such havoc on the hapless vendors in this City? How can the Minister allow Mr. King to continue to benefit from his livelihood when he has taken away the livelihood of so many families?
There is this notion among the PNC political big wigs, that their supporters are so docile and loyal that come election time, they will support them rather than the PPP. The URP hopes that the PNC supporters, especially the youths, wake up and understand that their votes are worth a lot and that whomsoever they vote for needs to treat them with the respect and attention they deserve. The Granger led Coalition is way over their heads, they are not listening to anyone outside their fortress; they have cast aside their core supporters and the county is suffering immensely. Something has got to give.
Dr. Vishnu Bandhu
Leader, URP

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