The Granger Administration’s actions speak so loudly that I can hardly hear what he is saying

Oct 27, 2018 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
Guyanese should avoid being irrationally optimistic about the future benefits of a soon to come into existence Oil Industry, lest they become disillusioned, disappointed and bitter. We Guyanese have a saying “Pot deh pon fire nah mean food deh pon plate.” In Shakespearean terms, “There’s many a slip betwixt cup and lip.”
In other words, “The Menu is not the Meal.” “The Picture is not the Person.” “The Promise is not the Performance.”
Experience tells us that there are many pitfalls between the Promise and the Performance. Guyanese should therefore be cautiously optimistic because of the predictable irrationality of the Granger Administration.
Too often the APNU-AFC coalition has used the con artist’s favourite ploy. The Bait and Switch: Politicians ‘bait’ Guyanese with the promise of the “Good Life” then ‘switch’ to the life of deception, denial and dependency. It is time to wake up.
Some may argue that the shotgun, rocky marriage of convenience between APNU and the AFC, both of whom are bastard descendants of political geriatrics, has contributed to the raft of poor decision making. Their marriage over the past three years has been barren of ideas, so much so that each one accuses the other of infidelities and now sleeps in separate political beds and is embarrassed to participate together in public functions like the Local Government Elections.
A nation and its people progress, not solely on the basis of its natural endowments of abundant mineral resources, but on the decisions made related to the use of those resources. Recall the moral of the story of the Foolish Virgins! In our context, we are dealing with foolish and self-serving politicians.
Decisions determine a nation’s destiny. Poor decisions lead to poor outcomes, hence my urging of my fellow Guyanese to curb their irrational exuberance when they hear or read about new discoveries or findings of billions of barrels of oil.
Huge deposits of oil do not make a nation rich. Think of Venezuela, Nigeria and other oil-rich but still poor countries. Barrels of oil don’t make you rich. Brain-based, baloney-proof and bias-free decisions do.
Unfortunately, the Granger-led administration is not known for its rational decision-making. There are many instances to support this view, but because of space constraints, I will restrain myself to mentioning a few.
The first example of the Granger-led Administration’s irrational decision making is the case of the massive salary hike of the ministers. Soon after assuming office the Granger administration jacked up the salaries of its ministers by an astounding 50 percent. What is irrational about that is that normally massive salary increases only happen when there is a corresponding massive surge in productivity and/or profit that justifies that increase. The ministers did nothing to justify that increase. And more importantly, they had no proven track record of competence!
To put things into proper perspective, if a CEO of any corporation or company in a developed country had increased the salary of its top executives without proper justification, he would be immediately fired on the grounds of financial mismanagement.
To tell the nation at a recent press conference that the rationale for the salary increase of the ministers was the fact that a few civil servants were earning more than the ministers and that the ministers didn’t feel comfortable with that and so that had to be corrected is rubbish. Can you imagine what the administration will do when they discover the salaries of the top executives of Exxon!
That decision is a classic example of the standard decision making process of Poor Third World leaders. As one observer noted, Third World Leaders make decisions the way pigs make bacon!
Contrast that with the way Exxon executives make decisions. In announcing their support for the Amazon Warriors, the CEO pointed out that Exxon was pleased to support the Amazon Warriors, note this, because of the consistent high quality performance of the Warriors over the years of the tournament. Exxon’s support for the Warriors was based on rational decision making: a proven track record. Exxon rewards consistent high performance. Not disparities in paychecks!
The decision to jack up salaries is even more mind boggling when you recall that it was the Minister of Finance himself who publicly asserted that “the cupboard was bare, there is nothing there!”
Another example of irrational decision making by the Granger Administration is the case of the pardoning of a number of juvenile prisoners, despite advice and exhortations not to do so. The decision is irrational because it violates the well-known and established psychological principle: rewarding bad behaviour enables that behaviour. You don’t have to be a graduate of the University of Guyana to know that. Any parent of a child knows that instinctively and intuitively. Have you ever heard of a case where a parent took a child to a lavish dinner in celebration of a poor end of term school report?
Unsurprisingly, soon after the young prisoners were released, a number of them were re-arrested for committing other offences. When you reward bad behaviour you are reinforcing that behaviour. When the Granger Administration rewards non-performance it is enabling non-performance of the ministers.
Yet another instance of irrational decision making by the Granger Administration is the appointment of stunningly underqualified individuals to senior positions in government organizations. According to recent reports in the press, the Minister of Finance bemoaned the fact that most of the corporations were running at a loss and that none of the ministries has the requisite capacity to perform.
The appointment of a person qualified in one area, say an environmental specialist, to manage an Oil Industry, is like choosing the best dental surgeon in the country to perform open-heart surgery on a heart patient. It is not the Ph. D behind the name that counts; it is the skills set, the core competencies or as Warren Buffet says, their ‘circle of competence’. What is required is a person with at least a minimum of 5 years’ experience at the executive level to run the Oil Industry Department.
Editor, would you use the most up to date Google cartographic map of Guyana to navigate your way in Trinidad? No! Why not? Because the map is not the territory it depicts.
In Guyana, there are many instances where you have the unqualified interviewing the qualified and finding the qualified unqualified for the job! The predictable irrationality of the Granger Administration! It reminds one of the famous Roman Emperor Caligula who so loved one of his horses, he appointed the horse as a consul!
It is well established in business circles that the human resource is the most valuable resource of a business or a country. What lessons can the recently concluded FIFA World Cup Final teach the Granger Administration? Take the case of France. Some journalists jokingly referred to France as being the 8th African country participating in the World Cup because of the high number of African players on the team. France is not known for its loving regard for black people. Yet, France was able to win the World Cup because of the sheer power, speed and sublimely skilled African players.
Skills and competence trumped ethnic considerations.
Burnham was a political genius if only because he harnessed the knowledge, skills and competence of persons from all ethnic groups. The Granger Administration should take a page out of Burnham’s Playbook in this regard.
A final example of irrational decision making is the case of not hosting regular press conferences ostensibly because of pressing and onerous international obligations. The excuse used is an explanatory fiction. Any first year student of international relations will tell you that the leaders of Poor Third World Countries are ‘takers of decisions not makers of decisions’ at international meetings. They are not unlike the poor cousin who is invited to the party of a rich uncle. He or she goes to the party (in Guyanese parlance) to ‘tek in all dey gat’! Third World leaders at meetings abroad are politely listened to but studiously ignored. They go there either to beg, borrow or brag about meeting President So-and-So from such and such country. Check the ‘photo-ops’ that are splashed all over government-owned media outlets on the return of the leader. What does a poor nation state bring to the table of the rich and powerful?
For Guyanese to benefit from an Oil Industry, the Granger Administration needs to adopt policies of prudent financial and human resource management. To do so, the administration needs to appoint competent people, not hand-picked cronies, party loyalists and the unconscious incompetent.
Merely telling Guyanese that the oil money would not be squandered is not good enough, when we all know that over 1.4 billion dollars was spent on a flag raising ceremony! And over 150 million dollars is still unaccounted for!
The Granger Administration’s actions speak so loudly that I can hardly hear what he is saying.
Yours Truly
Concerned Citizen

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