Former Minister Winston Jordan belongs to yesteryear

Aug 25, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

---

Kaieteur News – Former Finance Minister, Winston Jordan, made a remark to the media last week that I found both comical and irritating. It is my belief that Mr. Jordan was the least impressive of all of the finance ministers since the first self-government administration at the beginning of the 1950.
You go through the list from the 1957 Jagan administration to Ashni Singh in 2015; Mr. Jordan comes no way close to those ministers from the PPP and the PNC, 1957 – 2015. Under Presidents Cheddi and Janet Jagan, Forbes Burnham, Desmond Hoyte, and Bharrat Jagdeo those finance ministers were way above the standing of Jordan.
The finance minister that was a mistake was Salahudeen (one name), a school teacher that Mr. Burnham made Finance Minister. Mr. Salahudeen was merely a figure head. Mr. Jordan was the second mistake for the choice of finance minister.
Whereas all finance ministers did not have ultimate space to carve out their own perspectives of the economy because they were operating under the jurisdiction of very self-confident heads of government except Presidents Ramotar and Granger. The difference was Jordan. Peter D’Aguiar came closest to wresting independence as finance minister.
This was because of the coalition regime in 1964 in which D’Aguiar felt that as a coalition partner he was not beholden to Premier Forbes Burnham and was in fact his equal. It was an interesting situation under President Ramotar with his finance minister, Dr. Ashni Singh. Ramotar was not as self-confident as all his presidential predecessors and Dr. Singh had wide latitude. But former president, Jagdeo had long chosen the economy as his baby and thus he made an input into financial policies at that time.
The finance minister that the head of government allowed total latitude in the history of both British Guiana and Guyana was Winston Jordan in the APNU+AFC administration of 2015-2020. But it was an uninspiring tenure.
No finance minister in the past birthed as much tax impositions as Jordan. Some of these new financial burdens were surreal. Owners of animal drawn carts had to pay more for their licence. Dog licence was reintroduced. The edict that allowed only the importation of vehicles less than eight years old affected the working class, especially taxi owners and mini-bus owners. Second-hand tyres were banned.
The banning of used tyres resulted in unconscionable mistreatment at the wharves by the Guyana Revenue Authority. Without exception, all imported vehicles were slapped with a $40,000 duty because the GRA officers claimed the tyres were not brand new. So I hatched a plan to catch the GRA.
At the time (July 2019), my Rav4 had died so I had to get a car. A personal friend with knowledge of the Japanese second-hand market arranged to import a car for me. I insisted on new tyres because I was warned what GRA on the wharves was doing. My item came in October 2019 and just causally, the officer told me that I have to pay $10,000 for each tyre that was worn.
You know how excessive my decibels could get. I told her the tyres were new and she had to measure it in front of me and my engineer friend who was right next to me. The excuse was they could not find the measurement specialist. That was the end of that. I got the personal cell phone of Jordan from a senior minister. I texted him twice with the words; “This is Freddie Kissoon.” My purpose was to alert him to the tyre scam. Jordan did not respond.
For the five years Jordan held the portfolio of finance, I met him once. It was at the weekly lime of African middle class men at Julian’s Restaurant at Cummings and Sixth Streets, Albertown. I was with David Hinds. He looked at me and said, “Hi Freddie.” The greeting lasted for two seconds.
So last week, Jordan told the media that if he was still finance minister, he would have awarded a six month cash grant rather than the one-off cash offering of $25,000 as COVID-19 relief. The obvious reaction of countless Guyanese is that Jordan can now open his mouth and give off all types of dreamy and saccharine vocabularies. But when he and his APNU+AFC colleagues were in power for 5 years VAT was placed on water, electricity, school fees etc.
Disparaging the one-off $25,000 COVID-19 gift, Jordan referred to it a “jerky announcement” by the PPP. When I read the word “announcement,” I remember in August 2019 at an APNU+AFC campaign rally in Bartica, Jordan made a jerky announcement. He exclaimed; “War break” in relation to the scrapping of house to house registration. We are still to see the war.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

---

---