Granger's 'good life manifesto' is exposed as platitudes bereft of careful thought or planning

Granger’s ‘good life manifesto’ is exposed as platitudes bereft of careful thought or planning

Nov 16, 2019 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

After four and a half years of David Granger’s hapless administration, Guyanese have lost belief in our ability to progress as a nation.
When PPP Presidential candidate Irfaan Ali made a promise to create fifty-thousand new jobs, the immediate reaction of his opponents was to scoff at the idea, given that this was a conservative number, arrived at after lengthy planning sessions involving persons who had moved Guyana from lowly Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC1) to HIPC2, Middle Income (MIC) and then to Upper Middle Income Country. The idea that this job-creation plan is seen as unrealistic and/or empty campaign promise was sobering.
Just how much have we regressed under David Granger that the populace cannot accept we can create new jobs even with the discovery of billions of barrels of oil and production set to begin before the end of 2019?
It is instructive when Irfaan Ali’s job-creation plan is juxtaposed with Winston Jordan’s statement: “If you really want to downsize government, you are talking about another fifteen (thousand) to twenty thousand workers to really make that saving to pay those who will remain and you know that cannot happen. Even if it can happen, it would not be able to happen overnight so to speak.”
The differences in vision and ability to execute plans become very clear. Jordan is struggling to keep an economy afloat, even as energy companies and their satellites pour onto our shores. Economic prosperity is not reaching our masses. Granger’s ‘good life manifesto’ is exposed as platitudes bereft of careful thought or planning.
When establishing a Public Service Staff College, David Granger said, “It is my view that the public service is the engine of the executive, (and) it is essential to have an efficient public service…We need a public service that is reliable, and I mention this, the relevance, the responsiveness, the resourcefulness and reliability, because I believe in having stronger regions.”
The fact that this same Public Service that was not good enough for Granger, had worked under the management and policy direction to move Guyana forward for over two decades was lost on David Granger. It is not that the Public Service has become inefficient overnight; the change has been due to David Granger’s administration of poor policy, paucity of management experience and skill coupled with rampant corruption and penchant for extravagance of his (Granger’s) Ministerial management team. Style without substance; reliance on photo-ops without meaning; promises made as comfort to fools and glib retorts to serious questions on accountability have been the hallmarks of Granger’s incompetence as a leader.
Editor, Winston Jordan was an employee of this Public Service during that period of much progress. Also, in 2003, the World Bank said “Guyana’s progress in implementing the reforms specified for reaching the completion point has been satisfactory, with all triggers met, except for two. These two triggers pertain to civil service reform – namely, the requirement to lay-off 1,000 core civil servants, and to complete a list of job descriptions and design a performance appraisal system.
The authorities have requested that those two triggers be waived. The waiver requests are based on significant progress made by the authorities in implementing a more comprehensive civil service reform program with support from the IDB” (REPORT NO. P7607-GUA).
The Jagdeo administration fought to keep those Public Service jobs in 2003, an Irfaan Ali administration would do the same. Elections are on 2nd March 2020.
Respectfully
Robin Singh

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Granger’s ‘good life manifesto’ is exposed as platitudes bereft of careful thought or planning

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