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Bharrat Jagdeo is trying to weasel out of the Berbice Bridge deal
Dear Editor,
I note in the Thursday, July 12 edition of the PPP aligned Guyana Times newspaper, an article under the headline “BBCI wants Minister Patterson at negotiation table” appearing on page 3 and continued on page 9.
On page 9 the article reads, in part, “(Opposition Leader Bharrat) Jagdeo reminded that there was a financial model in place under the past Government, but noted that he was unsure what had become of that under the coalition Government. He strongly believes that the financial model may have been interfered with and this was something that had to be explained.”
Mr. Jagdeo is being disingenuous, duplicitous and seeking to mislead Guyanese.
Mr. Jagdeo is either feigning ignorance for nefarious political purposes or he is fully aware that the Coalition Government has not touched a single word in the concession agreement that his PPP government signed.
It is worthwhile to remind, too, that Mr. Jagdeo’s self-confessed best friend (BF) Mr. Bobby Ramroop is a major shareholder in BCCI. It cannot go unnoticed, therefore, that all of this manufactured brouhaha about outlandish toll increases and Mr. Jagdeo’s subsequent tongue-in-cheek suggestion that government should “buy out the other stakeholders” (Stabroek News, page 10, July 12, 2018) is designed to bail out his BF, Bobby Ramroop from what has turned out to be a horrible deal for Guyana.
The carefully crafted image of Mr. Jagdeo as some sort of economic wizard or czar is coming apart before our very eyes. Like the white elephant Skeldon Sugar Factory, the Marriott Hotel, Amaila Falls and numerous others, this is another deal which has unmasked the former president as an executive hustler, hustling to create and facilitate deals and arrangements to enrich friends and associates and the former PPP government.
Mr. Jagdeo is now engaged in bluster and rhetoric as he desperately tries to extricate himself from the mess that the Berbice Bridge Company has found itself in as a result of a flawed arrangement which was engineered by Mr. Jagdeo himself.
Further, it is widely known that the planned PPP move to increase tolls in 2014 and 2015 were only staved off because of the impending elections. And it is now clear that had the PPP been put back into office the tolls would have been increased to the exorbitant levels now being revealed through this obnoxious BBCI request.
Had the PPP been in office Berbicians would have been made to suffer under these oppressive toll 1000% increases which the PPP head honcho, Jagdeo, would have insisted been approved with the sole purpose being for the shareholders (his BF being among them) to profit wildly from windfall dividends. For all the PPP talk of caring about Berbicians, the evidence of their actions and plans betray them. They are being unmasked for the uncaring lot that the people of Guyana came to realise they were, and booted them from office in 2015.
Berbicians are fortunate that the Coalition Government is on their side and has bluntly rejected the toll increases and in fact reduced the tolls previously.
Earl Hamilton
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