Why confidential contract upfront?

Jun 24, 2021 Editorial

---

Kaieteur News – We fully understand the need to have interested parties sign confidentiality contract first, which has its time and place. Yet, even as this is said, we are fully aware that signed confidentiality agreements can be used to handcuff and muzzle anyone who may be inclined to speak out and spill the beans. That is, dirty beans.
Because we are now so sharply attuned with how both old and new PPP governments have done business that we cannot give its leaders and its carefully chosen disciples the benefit of any doubt. Not a speck of it can be given, or should be expected, from this quarter. There is only the hardest of suspicions, the deepest distrusts. For this, PPP leaders have only themselves to blame for the muddy smelly waters in which they find themselves.
To repeat our position stated a moment ago: we are suspicious. Because, when signing a confidentiality agreement is held out as a mandatory first step, then we have no option but to suspect that some degree of skullduggery is in the works. There is good basis for us to take this position for, given what has occurred in the past (and with everything that one government after another gets near to), there is this sharp, heightened skepticism and cynicism.
Our leaders in both the government and the opposition have fully earned the nasty and dirty places, which they now inhabit, which now stand like so many nooses around their necks. They have the long, crooked records that serve as the evidence, all the proof that is needed. They have all the things that have gone wrong in one situation after another, and one project after another, that damn them and expose them for the tricksters and deceivers that they are. They have committed so many terrible wrongs against the expectant population of this land that they are tongue-tied from providing any reasonable answers that can persuade as to the truthfulness of their oversight and the honesty of their character and positions. The best that they can do is hurl stones at each other, when they replace each other in the corridors of power. Look at our leaders, and listen to them closely, and they are that pathetic, such exemplars of what is sickening in this society.
They are unable to furnish answers for million-dollar monies surrounding big projects. Not when their accounting is less than transparent, and utterly shabby, which we believe is deliberate, so that there is no paper trail that points back to them. They make a lot of empty noises that they will be accountable, and that the Guyanese people must hold them to that commitment. But then they turn right around, and lie in the face of the public. They do so without a trace of shame, and then they turn smartly again, and do the very same things again. It is misdeed upon misdeed, where they ponder and plan on how to come up with more and more of these perversities and provocations.
The latest of which is this business about interested parties being required to sign a confidentiality agreement right up front, in order to participate in the bidding for lands where the former clay brick factory is housed. That, too, stands as a monument to the disastrous white elephants, of which the PNC government has a large herd of them. A lot of disturbing things could be done on 46 acres of prime land; many things come to life, which is part of the key to unlocking the secrets in which government engages in, when it is up to no good.
Our history has shown that, time and again, prime land, which is the property of the State, is a temptation that can barely be resisted; very few do so successfully or consistently, which is one of the reasons we are skeptical and suspicious. And when it is a total of 46 acres of such prime land that is in play that is almost like striking a rich motherlode of a vein in the goldfields or oilfields. Quite a few Guyanese men, many Guyanese leaders, and numerous Guyanese professional public servants have fallen, all over themselves, for the seductive lure of such incredibly mouthwatering prospects. Even the people in the private sector have stepped up to the table to tap into their share of the national prizes on offer. Men just cannot help themselves, and criminally enrich themselves, while impoverishing the prospects of a people still further.
They gut and grab and grind the life out of any dreams that once stirred in the hearts of hopeful Guyanese. They must have found a buyer, or have some of them lined up in the wings with more secrecy to come. This is what our position at this publication is: that when the interested parties are compelled to sign a confidentiality agreement right at the beginning, then they (the government, through its NICIL arm) does not want anybody talking, no secrets leaking out of how the business of the people is really done in this country. Prime state land, and 46 acres of it, can drive men mad, and make them do things that leave even divine powers in heaven open-mouthed.

---

---