There is a lot wrong in Government circles

Sep 22, 2018 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Some people ask why I am writing all of these analytical pieces; why don’t I retire? I don’t know why I should retire. People who are far more incompetent than I can ever be and are my age, aren’t retiring.
And my motto has always been that evil triumphs when Good men do nothing.
Elections are coming in less than two years and most people still want me to keep writing. Some even want me to restart a commentary, so I am writing to keep my writing and investigative skills honed for 2020; in case I want to take part in the elections in one way or another. After 2020 I will see.
My only explanation is that I am a compulsive researcher intent on analyzing and exposing the Guyana situation in its starkness. And I want to remind everyone that 25 years ago, I was invited by Mr. Hugh Desmond Hoyte to join him in his battle against the PPP. He also invited Adam Harris and Kit Nascimento to join him. The Guyana President Hoyte wanted a Guyana which was undivided by race. For him it was not an empty campaign promise [his supporters even called him Desmond Persaud].
He wanted the business sector to be the engine of growth, because when you have a strong business sector and growing private investment, it creates jobs and wealth for the nation. Some days, I can’t believe that I spent 23 years fighting for what I see going on in this country.
A recent Kaieteur News editorial on the sliding dollars says it all. Nothing works; everything has virtually ground to a halt. If you want to sell any property, it takes upward of one year to pass transport. The Supreme Court registry is a dead duck! People sell property to facilitate business or to protect them from bankruptcy, well not in Guyana.
You are going to be out of luck if it happens that you have to sell property to prevent bankruptcy. No democracy can flourish without a legal system, which is functioning to dispense justice, and ours doesn’t. The mere length of time it takes to resolve disputes is in itself a disincentive to doing business or seeking legal relief on any matter here.
According to Lord Paddy Ashdown, the British MP who was tasked with restoring democracy to Bosnia after the civil war, he said that without a functioning legal system, you can’t have proper elections, good business or a democracy; so before anything is done to restore democracy, you must fix the legal system.
We can’t enter major contracts with extractors like EXXON and other big business operations which will appear when we begin to draw down from the oil. We must have a good judicial system because if we don’t; we won’t be able to enforce anything. We were not able to win any case against GTT much less EXXON.
And I just want to send this warning to your readers. Just as they see the government functioning (or not functioning) in national infrastructure, GuySuCo, GPL, road repairs, a police force which doesn’t serve or protect, all transport systems, traffic jams on the East Bank and the East Coast, a dysfunctional local government system especially the city of Georgetown, these same government people, if we don’t raise our voices in protest now, will run and ruin the oil sector.
So what is happening here? Are we appointing a Chief Justice? A Chancellor? The rules for consultation for these major positions, including the chair of GECOM, in our laws, were put there to force dialogue and compromise between the two major ethnic groups; business men call it horse-trading.
It’s why Hoyte accepted to have a dialogue with Jagdeo instead of marching on the streets, but he warned Jagdeo that, “superficial compromise will not be acceptable or advisable”. It’s the only way to peace and development of the one nation we all so glibly say we want!
Hoyte’s successors today, in his own party, have completely forgotten what Hoyte wanted, what he and the PNC supporters went through when we were not in power. Now that we are in power, we are doing nothing to protect our supporters against retaliation when the other side gets into power for another 23 years.
We are behaving as if we can never go into opposition again! Unless we are talking about a dictatorship, we must end up in opposition again sometime, and we have to protect our children. We saw that Hoyte’s way brought us to the most prosperous national position since independence, with a 9% GDP growth in 1992 with his Economic Recovery Programme.
Why have we forgotten it? We have a government, which is contracting the economy with poor economic policies just as Forbes Burnham’s government did from 1964 to 1985! It means that we learned nothing, and the evidences of corruption in public office is still very apparent.
In KN of 19th September, we have Ayube, a minibus driver, according to Kaieteur News, reporting on the daily ridiculous situation on the East Coast Demerara Highway. “Imagine, you have one East Coast Demerara highway and the Railway Embankment bypass. Imagine both are being repaired at the same time.
Imagine thousands of vehicles traversing each day; imagine the Sheriff Street project starting. This is madness. This man Ayube is a better manager than the people who are running the Ministry! The head of which is now accused of corruption in a US$148-million bridge contract scandal.
And speaking about madness, in my opinion, we are shutting down estates without exploring an existing alternative, which is very likely to offset the losses from sugar, and we have a Special Projects Unit, which is anything but special!
Since it is manned mostly by the same failed managers from GuySuCo and since the new people know nothing about sugar, they are now talking about co-generation as a way to salvage the industry on the verge of the oil flow.
They are carrying sawdust and paddy husk to help the estates to cogenerate power, because they do not have enough cane or a long enough cropping season to generate power from the cane bagasse for cogeneration for more than six months a year!
Tony Vieira.

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