The No Confidence Vote and the “Ides” of December

Jan 01, 2019 News

---

By Rawle Lucas
On Friday December 21, 2018 before the night could fully mature, many Guyanese got the news that the “No-Confidence” motion brought by the Opposition against the Government was successful.
This piece of news was accompanied quickly by word of the person who had disappointed his Party and shattered the confidences of his colleagues in the National Assembly. It was not the Ides of March, but it must have felt eerily like that to the government when one man, not three as in the case of Julius Caesar, stabbed it in the back with the purpose of ending the life of the government.
Despite the lag of six days, occurring in December and with a similar purpose of ending the rule of a leader, the biography of Mr. Charrandass Persaud could sufficiently refer to the event as taking place on the “Ides of December”.
Ever since the action, some have hurriedly joined in condoning the dissenter’s action. Others have condemned it. There are those who are still wondering about the unequivocal bias in favour of a group that showed little or no mercy to most Guyanese when it wielded power for 23 years.
Some effort must be made to comprehend the decision of Mr. Charrandas Persaud and the meaning and purpose of his vote. Mr. Persaud has sought to help this effort by giving context and rationale for his decision, even at one point portraying it as heroic and patriotic.
His strenuous efforts were clad in a few strands of personal, political and economic reasons for bringing down the government that he was a part of. I do not intend to discuss Mr. Persaud and his vote in this article but wish merely to provide information that readers could use to make their own evaluation of his decision and motives.
One could start by observing that Mr. Persaud said many things that he claimed disturbed him. While he fussed about what others did or did not do, he gave no concrete evidence of his attempt to fix the many issues of his vexation before deciding to match the fate of his own government with that of Julius Caesar.
A substantive reason he advanced for his vote was a remark made by the Chairperson of the PNCR, Mrs. Volda Lawrence, who expressed deep support for her Party’s members when, in this paraphrased version, she said that she would give jobs to them because she knows them.
This subjective expression of Mrs. Lawrence occurred not too long before the No Confidence vote and was enough to overshadow three years of joint effort by the APNU and AFC to bring Guyana to the point of respectability again.
Mr. Persaud took a diminished view of this remark and appeared only capable of assessing it in a very narrow racial context while conveniently ignoring the reality that the PNCR was a multi-ethnic party.
This seemingly discoloured perspective about Mrs. Lawrence’s remarks was given greater weight by Mr. Charrandas Persaud than the well-publicized fact that the Leader of the Opposition described his Party, the PPP/C, as a “Coolie” people Party with the same attendant purpose ascribed to Mrs. Lawrence’s remarks.
Despite the incongruence between the two remarks, Mr. Persaud was quite comfortable joining the Opposition to bring down his own government. Presumably, the contradiction was self-satisfying enough for him to vote yes with one who showed such open racial bias instead of abstaining-a more even-handed way of showing his displeasure.
The economic reasoning that Mr. Persaud gave does not hold water either and leaves one more flabbergasted than ever. In the video presentation, he made much play of the condition of the sugar industry.
Every Guyanese knew that the sugar industry had collapsed under the weight of 23 years of mismanagement and reckless spending of the PPP/C administration. Every Guyanese knew also that the PPP/C administration closed sugar estates and let workers go.
In other cases, production was scaled down drastically affecting all sugar workers. With sugar production costs in Guyana way above world prices, Guyanese taxpayers, who were bailing out the sugar industry, were also helplessly subsidizing sugar consumption by the rest of the world through the export of the product.
These were facts known to every Guyanese, including those sitting in the National Assembly. To rest his vote on sugar knowing that his government could ill-afford to subsidize the rest of the world puts paid to any claims of patriotism.
It was common knowledge too that, by the time the APNU-AFC Coalition came to power, sugar was on its knees faint and bleeding and could be laid level at any time by the burden of its high and unbearable costs.
It did not appear enough to Mr. Persaud that the Coalition chose not to close down the entire industry but decided to restructure it instead. By its actions of not closing the industry, the Coalition saved about 12,000 jobs while having to let go of 6,000 workers.
This is information that everyone in the National Assembly had on the night of December 21. Without offering an alternative position, it appears that Mr. Persaud preferred an all-or-nothing approach to the sugar industry and have everyone go down with it, including the economy of Guyana.
This writer has to believe that responsible conduct in the National Assembly would include having most, if not all the facts about the economic performance of the economy if one wanted to use it as justification to abandon one’s colleagues.
Mr. Persaud acted like “Chicken Little” by claiming that the sky (the economy) was falling and leading Guyanese to believe that they were facing a fate of doom. In his video, he never shared with his intended audience that every economy has a goods and a services sector and that the services sector is often used to support the goods sector.
The prominent goods industries are in agriculture, manufacturing and mining. Anyone in the National Assembly that night with a determination to see his or her government succeed would have taken the time to acquaint himself or herself with the trends in the key industries of the country. The story about sugar has already been presented. And so, one could ask what about rice?
Rice took a hit when the PetroCaribe programme with Venezuela came to an end. But the rice industry was on the rebound and its performance in 2017 alone was better than any year between 2007 and 2014.
Moreover, even a cursory look at the performance of the industry would have shown that output was 25 percent better in the four years of 2015 to 2018 when compared to the years 2011 to 2014 under the PPP/C.
The dissenting member of the government took a swipe at the Minister of Agriculture and while doing so might have missed another sign of good economic measure in the wider agricultural sector.
An important objective of the government was to expand the diversification of the agricultural sector. This effort is reflected often in the “Other” crops section of the economy. Rice and sugar are standalone crops while “Other” crops is a combination of several types of produce. It includes fruits of various types, ground provision of various types, cash crops and so forth.
Rice and sugar have had years of colonial and external support and robust government intervention unlike “Other” crops which has relied largely on the indigenous and ingenious efforts of Guyanese.
The investment by ordinary Guyanese in “Other” crops is a true reflection of their private entrepreneurial spirit and the continued assertion of their independence. The seminal value of rice and sugar to the economy cannot be ignored, but every Guyanese can take satisfaction in the knowledge, and ought to be proud, that the self-made industry of “Other” crops continually outperform both sugar and rice in the fields and contribute to this country being a net exporter of food.
The Table below shows the comparative physical output of the three industries in their raw state.

 

In every year, the output of the “Other” crops industry was larger than sugar and rice. It continued its growth all the way through 2017 and is forecasted to maintain this progress in 2018. Further, average output was nine percent higher from 2015 to 2017 than it was from 2012 to 2014 under the PPP/C.
One must further ask the question what is it that would lead one to doubt the economic efforts of your own government when plantain production exceeded previous years by over 2,200 percent under your own government’s management? What is it that would lead one to question his or her own government when pineapple production exceeded previous years by over 800 percent under your own government’s management?
What is it that would lead one to lose confidence when citrus production exceeded previous years by over 418 percent under your own government’s management? What is it that would lead one to go against his or her own Party when bora and hot pepper production exceeded previous years by over 400 percent under your own government?
Additionally, egg production, tomatoes, bananas, eschallot and other ground provisions, all exceeded previous years by over 200 percent each under the APNU-AFC Coalition. In addition to rice and sugar, the Berbice Region, an area represented by Mr. Persaud, is a major commercial producer of high performing crops like eschallot, tomatoes, bora and boulanger.
Readers must wonder why heads turned in the National Assembly and people felt a sense of shock when the performance of the “Other” manufacturing sector, the construction sector and the gold industry are factored into the decision of the one-time government supporter. The “Other” manufacturing sector has shown steady growth over time.
Surely with annual manufacturing output larger by an average of 11 percent from 2015 to 2017 compared to the period 2012 to 2014 under the PPP/C, one must be surprised with the decision of Mr. Persaud.
The construction sector too could not cause disappointment to anyone on the government’s side. It was an average of 15 percent larger from 2015 to 2017 over the period 2012 to 2014 under the PPP/C. For all the talk about disaffection in the gold industry no sector or industry came close to what it delivered for the country, growing its output 39 percent from 2015 to 2017 over the period 2012 to 2014.
In the services sector of the economy, transportation and storage play a big role in supporting production. It was 24 percent larger than it was in the period 2012 to 2014. That the transport and storage industries grew consistently is a reflection of the meaningful progress of the goods industry and the active nature of the economy.
Mr. Persaud had a choice to make and he made it. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt but after revisiting the evidence, it is proving difficult to do so. In light of the information presented herein, at best, one could have understood an abstention, not a yes vote against his government.
Charrandass’s choice contradicts reality for the sky was not falling. Were there some intangibles that the government might have missed that were more important to Mr. Persaud than the evidence presented above? Maybe. He knows best.
For sure, he clearly did not think that recalibrating the economy and putting it on a footing with which it could sustain its development was worth his time and energy. Returning to the lawless conduct and practice that characterized the PPP/C rule seems more acceptable to him.
And so, the people of Guyana sit with the reality of the Ides of December, but still with a chance when elections are called to avoid ending up in the fox’s den and suffering the consequences of the naïve characters in the Chicken Little story.

---

---