Opposition boycotts flag-raising ceremony

May 27, 2017 News

The main political opposition, the People’s Progressive Party Civic, on Thursday evening, did not attend the 51st Independence Flag Raising Ceremony at the D’Urban Park facility. It is unclear why any of the PPP/C

A wide-angle view of the VIP section of the D’Urban Park facility Thursday evening during the Independence celebrations.

parliamentarians did not attend; however, invitations were sent out.
The opposition has been extremely critical of the D’Urban Park project since its inception.
Questions were raised regarding the financing of the project. Government had said that a company, Homestretch Development Inc. was incorporated to complete the facility through private donations and contributions.
Minister of Public Infrastructure David Patterson had said during the budget debates that no public funds were disbursed to the company. However, in its 2017 budget, government approved $500M to facilitate payments of outstanding sums of money owed to contractors for works done on D’Urban Park.
This took the total sum for the project to over $900M since in 2016 a total of $479M was allocated to the project. The company had collected $27.7M in cash donations while contributions in kind were valued at $33.9M.
Following questions by PPP/C MP Juan Edghill, Patterson reported that some of these donors include Chung’s Global, Agri Parts, Courtney Benn Contracting Services, Pritipaul Singh Investments, Puran Brothers Disposal Services and NABI.
Patterson explained that on November 22, 2016 the company had written to the Ministry of Finance seeking for the ministry to liquidate its liabilities and following discussions, it was decided that this will be done via an allocation the 2017 budget for the company to offset its liabilities.
Some of the creditors which the company owed for works done are Toolsie Persaud, B.K Supermix, BK Quarries, Cevon’s Waste Disposal, National Hardware, Cummings Electrical and Car Care Enterprise.
The ‘no-show’ by the opposition members comes one year after the PPP/C would have walked out of the event last year.
In 2016, the party had said that when its members arrived, they were forced to stand and wait to enter D’Urban Park. According to Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo on arrival at the VIP area, there were no seats set aside for opposition MPs except for the two former presidents, himself and Samuel Hinds.
Meanwhile, in the party’s 2017 independence message, it reiterated commitment to bringing greater economic and social prosperity to Guyana, improve systems of government, strengthen democratic institutions and enhance rights and freedoms of Guyanese.
According to the party, it has done some self-examination and acknowledged that although it would have implemented transformative changes in Guyana during its time in office, it has to persevere even more so as to bring greater ethnic, religious and class unity among citizens.

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