ON ITS KNEES

Mar 01, 2017 Editorial, Features / Columnists

Undoubtedly, Jagdeo would seek a third term should the Caribbean Court of Justice rule in favour of presidential term limits. The former president is obsessed with power and will do anything to seek a third term, including bamboozling his cronies at Freedom House.
He is disingenuous when he did not answer the question as to whether he will seek a third term. Instead, he identified several qualities which all PPP presidential hopefuls should possess in order to become the party’s presidential candidate. As the head of the party, Jagdeo deep inside, believes that he is the best qualified person to run the country.
According to Jagdeo, a presidential candidate must be competent, visionary and must be able to unite the party and bring people together. These qualities suggest that he is describing himself except that he left out the word ‘arrogant’. The truth is that Mr. Jagdeo is a manipulator who over the years has directed the members of the PPP to do his bidding.
He wields significant power within the PPP and he has often used the carrot and stick method to get what he wants. It was Jagdeo who signed the constitutional amendment that provides for term limits for presidents, into law. So for him to seek a third term is immoral.
Former President Donald Ramotar has thrown a monkey wrench in Jagdeo’s spokes. He stated that despite the Court’s ruling, the PPP support for presidential term limits has not changed. However, Jagdeo and no one else, will decide who will be the presidential candidate for the PPP in 2020. In 2011 and 2015, he hand-picked Donald Ramotar to be the Presidential candidate and there is reason that he will hand-pick himself in 2020.
Information recently surfaced that following the PPP conference, the PPP has become divided and that Jagdeo is facing tremendous pressure from the old guard at Freedom House for dictating policies during the PPP conference. Many are questioning whether he should be the head of the party. His utterances that he will file criminal charges against ministers of the government for their refusal to disclose their assets to the Integrity Commission is an attempt to deflect the attacks away from him.
Jagdeo has become desperate since his isolation from governance and mainstream politics in 2011. Going ballistic on this publication is no rational. It smacks of a copycat arrangement given that United States President Donald Trump is operating in the same vein. It now seems that whatever is a fad in the United States is readily accepted in Guyana. Even the politicians now do the copying.
For Mr. Jagdeo to accuse ministers of the government for being corrupt is highly unusual. The opposition leader should be reminded that his presidency was synonymous with corruption, crime, immorality, vulgarity, extra-judicial killings, and the marginalization of Afro-Guyanese. Not only were the country’s resources plundered, but Guyana became a narco-state and the second most corrupt country in the Caribbean under his presidency.
He must be told in no uncertain terms that since taking office, the government has been working assiduously to clean up the mess it inherited from the PPP administration. In less than two years in office, the government has reduced corruption, improve education, health care and social services, modernize public infrastructure and clean-up and beautify the country. It has held local government elections after an absence of 22 years, reduced VAT from 16 percent to 14 percent, lowered the toll on the Berbice Bridge and increased the minimum wage from $40,000 to $55,000 and old age pension from $13,125 to $19,000.
The government also established three new towns and is in the process of instituting three more. So for Jagdeo to assign an “F” grade to the government is beyond being childish. He has no moral authority or any sense of objectivity to judge this government.

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