A fresh message of Hope to drown out the noise

Nov 12, 2017 AFC Column

---

By PM Hon. Moses Nagamootoo
Almost at the mid-point of our first term in office, the APNU+AFC Coalition Government has managed to pull Guyana back from the abyss of an underground economy, pervasive corruption, political despair and a bad international reputation. The fight-back that we began in 2015 has to date created the contours of an orderly, law-governed and stable democracy. Our moving forward with purpose has begun to refresh the image of Guyana amongst the world’s democracies.
The recent resumption of the 11th Parliament, 71st Sitting, was the forum for the Coalition to showcase the story of ‘Guyana Coming Back’. It was another opportunity for President Granger to deliver his message of stability and success, and a bright future for Guyanese to look forward to.
But the Opposition wasn’t going to let that happen. Like the hyena with its klepto-parasitic tendencies, Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo, once a president, was determined to steal His Excellency’s centre-stage. Like the Phantom of the Opera, he came in to haunt the House and steal the attention that normally belongs to the Leader of the nation. What ensued was beyond reasonable expectation, beyond the pale of otherwise acceptable, rational parliamentary conduct.
DAY OF SHAME
November 2, 2017 will go down as a day of shame in the history of Guyana, in this our first multi-party democracy. The orchestrated ‘disruption by deployment’ came across as discordant howling, croaking and groaning that was designed to drown out the President’s voice. It was designed to show disrespect for the Executive, to deface and mock the symbols of our democracy.
But the Hansard will show that His Excellency, President David Arthur Granger, delivered another one of his customarily powerful addresses. He gave a status report on the progress Guyana has made, and our great prospects from oil and gas in a green economy. He remained composed, stately and as confident as a real leader would be. But the opposition were not getting what they wanted; they couldn’t stop the President from speaking, so they ratcheted up the drone into howling and screaming to drown out his voice.
A FRESH MESSAGE OF HOPE
Anyone listening to their President heard a fresh message of hope for a wealthier nation, with brilliant citizens living their best lives. Hope, poet Alexander Pope said long ago, springs eternal in the human breast, and our President is keeping it alive. But unfortunately, for the Phantom and his raucous choir, every Presidential promise was like a poisoned dart in the heart of his dream of returning to power.
That dart dug deeper as the President spoke about the Government’s prudent management of the economy which is showing moderate but consistent growth above 3%. He explained how the working people are benefiting from this growth, especially those earning at minimum wage level which has been increased from $39,000 to $60,000 per month to date. At the same time, workers have been paying less income tax, and business owners less taxes on goods and services after we reduced the Jagdeo-imposed Value-Added Tax (VAT) from 16% to 14%.
President Granger said to sugar workers that even though the Jagdeo regime had bankrupted their industry, the Coalition government was still able to pinch monies from wherever it could over the past months to the tune of $31B, a GuySuco bail out so that sugar workers could continue to receive wages and benefits.
HIDDEN FACES
At that point, the Jagdeo-ites began to hide their faces behind the placards with bad spelling that they had smuggled into the Chamber. The TV cameras zoomed in on the placard that Jagdeo himself hoisted that protested the “deviding” of our people.
President Granger had a hard time pitching his voice above the raucous babble, but Guyanese have heard him. They heard that the economy is in safe hands; that confidence in it has resulted in some 240 investment projects worth $187B now moving through the pipeline; and they heard that more Guyanese and tourists are coming home to visit, to marry, to bury, and to sight-see.
His Excellency touched on most aspects of the economy. He spoke of teachers receiving 9,000 free laptop computers in 2016, and of the more than 130 secondary schools, institutes, the university of Guyana and other institutions of learning being connected to free internet access. Countrywide, we are also seeing the setting up of more solar energy systems mostly in inland areas, including 3 of the newly named towns.
On Thursday November 2, my President stoically faced down the paper Goliath and his horde. He ended his address by reminding us that we all share a common home, stating unequivocally: “Guyana is a beautiful, blissful and bountiful country!” That was a class act.
DISRUPTIVE POLITICS
We can expect that the opposition’s disruptive behaviour will continue throughout the remainder of this first term. Jagdeo will continue to provoke retaliation. He will continue to sow seeds of discord and, like Gogol’s “Dead Souls,” he will harvest victims of imagined repression.
Notwithstanding the opposition’s frolicking, the nation’s business will go on. We will continue to believe that our pledge to build a united nation, enshrined in 1966, will not be made meaningless by opportunistic hustlers.
PROTESTS HAVE THEIR PRICES
In my long association with the inner workings of Parliament, I witnessed in 1965 opposition MPs walking into the assembly wearing black sashes painted with the words, “Free the Detainees.” That was a protest against the incarceration of PPP activists at the Sibley Hall. Then Speaker Alleyne ordered the protestors to leave the House.
In the 1980’s during Sase Narain’s sojourn as House Speaker (for an unbroken 20 years), he banned then Opposition Leader, Cheddi Jagan, from speaking because he had deliberately displaced the mace and knocked over the collection of law books in the House. Opposition MP, Isahak Bashir, was also banned from the house for throwing a glass at the Speaker.
There have been other incidents of isolated protests in and around Parliament. Except for one occasion when the APNU+AFC while in opposition drowned out Clement Rohee after a no-confidence motion had been passed against him, protests thereafter were confined to boycotts, walkouts and rigorous heckling.
I anticipate that disruption would once again become the calling card of the PPP under their slogan: “All struggle, no unity.” Injecting fear into people of coming elections-rigging has been their political jumbie for a long time. They have never stopped sowing political discord, promoting ethnic insecurity and economic instability, not even when Jagdeo ruled the land. That is his way of “deviding” Guyanese people.
He has been waiting for a long time for an excuse to activate a campaign of non-cooperation and civil disobedience. At best, it is a desperate, infantile tactic and we will see what good it will do.

---

---