Pradoville 2: the evil of politics, the politics of evil

Nov 13, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

One does not know how life will unfold. We think we do, but life has too many unforeseen intrusions.
As it stands today, Sunday, November 13, 2016, if I have to vote I will cast my ballot for the APNU-AFC Coalition. But 2020 is far away. Situations may intervene to cause me alienation from the current ruling party I voted for. I know for sure in 2019 I will reject APNU-AFC for municipal elections as I did this year.
I am still not distant from the Coalition, because I believe it inherited Herculean stables (plural) of rut, corruption, desecrations, destructions, demons and evil from the Jagdeo/Ramotar era that would wear down any group of politicians. It is only 18 months of power for the Coalition and meaningful, substantial changes cannot emerge in such a short space of time. But a caveat is in order; I don’t think from Mr. Granger to Mr. Nagamootoo, right down to the Ministers and the new political appointees in the public sector, there is the transformational instinct in any of them that Guyana, more than any other country in the world, needs.
This country has a sad and troubled history and political culture, with an ongoing impoverished economy. It will not secure a future without thinking, innovative, transformational leadership. Only Forbes Burnham made some attempts at that ontology, and he did not succeed, because he directed his efforts to the economy and not political culture, so in the end he ended up being stuck in Guyana’s traditional authoritarian cauldron.
I support the present ruling formation, but I cannot put my hopes in them transforming this nation in the fundamentally deep ways that are urgently required, because in all honesty, I do not see that temperament in any of them. Clive Thomas for me fit the bill. My early political deportment was influenced by Thomas whom I regard as a hero, but maybe because of age or resignation, I haven’t seen the emergence of Thomas as the type of thinker that I knew four decades ago.
As I wrote above, as it stands today, I will vote for the Coalition but I am certain I will not given them my vote in 2020 if by that time there is no prosecution over Pradoville 2. For me, this scandal is one of the worst acts of corruption in contemporary politics anywhere in the world. It needs graphic description which must be kept in the consciousness of the citizens so they could comprehend the madness that went on in the Pradoville 2 sale.
As a matter of fundamental policy, governments do not take state resources like lands, buildings, machines, and give to leaders in government. What takes place is corruption and patronage. A regime may buy a plane from a corporation and the leaders get a kickback. A President or Prime Minister may favour a certain friend’s company and it gets the concession to supply goods and services. You could also have sole-sourcing as we saw with Jagdeo and Ramroop. Surprisingly, government could also sell lands to investors cheaply.
This is not what happened in Pradoville 2. It is not only that the sale of the land was many percentage points below market value and hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money was used to landscape it. Three egregious dimensions of Pradoville are rotten and stink. One is that it was a house lot project, meaning it was not a favoured deal for investors who would set up business there. Yet some of those who took the lots to build homes to live in subsequently sold them. In other words, they bought house lots from the State not to build homes but to make mind-boggling profits.
The second nastiness is that these publicly owned lands were allocated to select people belonging to the ruling party who already have purchased house lots. Thirdly, persons who could have afforded to buy properties in Guyana at prevailing market rates were freely offered plots. The Jagdeo regime called in the President of the Caribbean Development Bank, at the time, Dr Compton Bourne, and offered him a plot. At that time, Bourne had lived out of Guyana the past forty years and held lucrative positions in different Caribbean countries. Surely, with his job, why not select a person in Guyana who needed land to build a home?
The Pradoville 2 scandal will remain one of the most nauseating acts of class rapacity ever seen in the English-speaking Caribbean. It showed the extent to which the Jagdeo regime was overtaken by the politics of evil and the evil of politics. This scandal cries out for prosecution.

2 thoughts on “Pradoville 2: the evil of politics, the politics of evil”

Henry Horton November 13, 2016 at 2:13 pm

Clive Thomas has been a deep disappointment indeed. What happened to this marxist/radical development economist? Alas, like most of the left, he has just disintegrated. Guyana appears devoid of vision or ideas.
RLSG November 14, 2016 at 10:50 am

Sadly I have to agree. If no one is prosecuted for the scandal that is Pradoville 2 the Guyanese electorate has a right to vote the APNU+AFC administration out of office. But to be replaced by the PPP is the choice between ‘a rock and a hard place’. There seems to be no worthy solution in sight. Cry my beloved country !!