We are still struggling and spiralling downwards in 2020

Apr 15, 2020 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,

Please permit me space in your letters column to respond to Dr. David Hinds, whom, since post elections, has been increasingly peddling a series of hollow narratives. I am usually not a fan of his writings. However, given the current state of our country – that is, a political crisis compounded with the adverse economic impact of COVID-19. I find it extremely necessary to respond to Dr. Hinds for his irresponsible rhetoric as I believe Dr. Hinds speaks to a particular audience who listens to him as a leader in the political sphere.
In his column on April 5, 2020, Hinds wrote, “Scrap this election. Destroy those boxes. Install an interim Government led by David Granger…” Then, in his column on April 12, 2020, Hinds wrote, “the PPP spun my proposal from last week to make it look as if I proposed the destruction of the ballot boxes to hide some evidence of the Coalition’s loss of the election and the PPP victory.”
Now, readers, observers and intelligent minds alike are probably wondering if Dr. Hinds is of sound mind or whether his intellectual faculties are dysfunctional and /or diminished. Perhaps Dr. Hinds forgot what he wrote the preceding week, or he omit to revisit his column from the preceding week, or he has suffered selective amnesia, or he is delusional, or he is living in a world by himself out of planet earth, or he is in absolute denial surrounded by a vacuum of fallacy and fantasies.
Moreover, these are the most absurdly ballistic assertions to begin with. In this regard, I would like to ask of Dr. Hinds to address the following (rhetorical) questions: What is an interim Government? Why do we need an interim Government? What is the rationale and justification for an interim Government? What are the principles upon which an interim Government ought to function? Do we have those principles imbedded within the behavioural attributes of the political actors’ subject to an interim Government? What should be the mandate (this can’t be just constitutional reform vaguely)? How should it function? Can Dr. Hinds clarify what he meant by “scrap an election”? What is the plausibility of his inherently weak concocted basis for such an absurdly unusual assertion? What motivated this ideology? If the election is scraped to put in place an interim arrangement, then, who will that interim Government be serving? Upon whose mandate, given by whom (certainly not the people), therefore, whose interest will an interim Government serve? How difficult is it to recount the votes in all districts? How difficult it is to respect and adhere to a transparent process in recounting the votes? How difficult it is to respect the authentic results, when declared of the election? Who really will an interim Government serve if the results of an election are scraped which reflects the will of the people? Is it a coincidence that since the U.S Government stated that it will lift sanctions against Venezuela should an interim Government be formed with the Opposition? Is this the underlying motivation for one side of the political spectrum to have adopted this new mantra, thus, effectively ignoring the auspices of a democratic system, inter alia, denying the will of the people and not respecting the outcome of a credible, democratically held election?
For the records, the PPP never rejected a full national recount. If there is anyone who does not want a recount, all the actions and evidence, by way of the maneuverings, legal and otherwise, including those obstructionary in nature, tantamount to bullyism and trickery, have all been the tactic of the APNU+AFC faction and this is an irrefutable fact recognized by the entire Western Powers, the E.U, U.S, U.K, Canada, CARICOM and the Commonwealth. The people of Guyana are not foolish or oblivious of these facts as Dr. Hinds would like the world or sections of the population to think.
Dr. Hinds always have the tendency to accuse the PPP administration of neglecting Afro Guyanese in the administration of its economic policies and his singular narrative is always about racism in some way shape or form. Editor, I wish to also take this opportunity to address these by way of some amount of policy analysis. While Dr. Hinds always peddled these sorts of arguments, he has never justified his arguments in any scholastic manner to support those assertions put forward by him from an evidenced based standpoint.
Towards this end, one ought to understand the difference between economic diversification versus economic devastation. Economic diversification was certainly facilitated under the previous Administration, while economic devastation has been the hallmark of the current de facto Administration. In this respect, the Minister of Finance boasted of some 4.7% growth in GDP for last year despite poor performances in traditional sectors, and that investors continue to ink concrete deals regardless of the political environment. The Minister went on to elaborate and suggests that over the years, the regime has been building and diversifying the economy.
The Minister perhaps is seemingly taking credit for that which was not engineered by him through any of his projects, programmes and policies. Economic diversification and economic devastation are two completely different realities altogether. The economic realities for which the Finance Minister’s policies and by extension the regime are largely responsible for are in fact, redistribution of wealth and economic devastation – that is, the case of downsizing the sugar industry which in effect led to massive unemployment rates, depression in the sugar communities, increases in non-performing loans in the banking sector, extraction of over $40 billion from circulation in the economy which in turn, sustains the village economies and has far reaching economic sustenance implications on the macroeconomy; a contributory factor, admitted by the Minister himself, for the financial constraints of the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) investments; and a massive loss in private consumption of about $180 billion.
In fact, the Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the Guyana Sugar Corporation Inc. in 2015, headed by Guyana’s prominent economist, Dr. Clive Thomas, never recommended the closure of any of the sugar estates because Dr. Thomas as an economist, understood the macroeconomic implications of such a move, and what was even worse, the COI cost tax payers over $50 million. This is largely why the traditional sectors continue to under-perform as admitted by the Minister. This under-performance of the traditional sectors resulted in a loss of some US$2 billion in foreign exchange over the last five years, despite being offset by Gold exports, other exports and foreign direct investments owing to oil and gas related activities in the economy. It is the number one factor why the Central Bank’s international reserve is less than the universal minimum benchmark of three months import cover for the first time in more than ten years when it has always been above three and four months import cover.
Further, the economic diversification which the Minister boasts of: as contended previously, the investments by foreign investors in the hotel and tourism industry and the reportedly explosive expressions of interests by foreign investors in the U.S, Canada and the U.K. and many other counties, to invest in the Guyana economy, are largely directly attributed to Guyana becoming a petroleum producing state, the tsunami of economic opportunities that the emerging oil and gas sector of itself will induce in the next two decades, and of note, these developments are not as a result of any projects conceptualized or implemented by the subject Minister or the Administration, rather these are direct results of projects, policies and initiatives that were already in place under the previous regime. It is public knowledge that the Exxon’s contract was signed in 1999. In other words, these developments that are occurring now are simply a natural default of this fundamental fact.
The subject Minister’s policies have no evidence of any economic diversification plan. It should be noteworthy to mention, more so, that even all the road projects and other developmental projects in the Hinterland regions and other parts of the country which are somewhat alluded to in the National Green State Development Strategy, were all conceptualized and developed in the National Development Strategy since 1996-1997. The National Development Strategy was put together, inter alia, 300 hours of meetings by 23 technical working groups consisting of over 200 Guyanese and is by far a more superior development strategy than that which is contained in the Green State Development Strategy.
Editor, I will close here for now and will consider another separate missive in which I will focus on educating Dr. Hinds of the impacts of the economic policies administered under the previous administration by simplifying the multiplier effect of those, versus those of his de factor Government. The APNU+AFC Administration has been stymieing Guyana’s economic development and progress since 2011 when it had a one seat majority in the National Assembly. These were largely the lead up to snap elections in 2015 and one would think that with the APNU+AFC winning that elections thus being placed in power to govern, that development would have progressed. In hindsight, the sharpest contrary view to this notion has been the outcome – and we are still struggling and spiralling downwards in 2020.

Yours faithfully,
Avinash Bhagwandin

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