Sugar is sweet, a leader sickly sweet

Jul 22, 2022 Editorial, Features / Columnists

Kaieteur News – We really thought that Guyana’s head of state had bigger things to do in a country that is dealing in billions as a matter of norm these days. But His Excellency, President Ali found the time in his self-declared busy schedule to share with the nation about the availability and price of sugar. We have no choice but to say that this is taking matters to the limit with misplaced priorities, misuse of precious leadership time, and mismanagement of so much left to go abegging in the meantime.

For a nation’s President, a country that found oil by the billions of barrels, and with dozens of wells now coming up for consideration for drilling clearance, a reasonable thought is that there is a CEO of the nation’s sugar company, and it makes the most sense for that senior officer to make such an announcement. A fair inquiry would be what happened to him in this instance, and how come he is not the one coming forward with such an announcement, thus freeing up the national leader to focus on the many bigger things now taking this country by storm. Surely, the President has the confidence that the CEO is capable of handling a task as delicate, and as vital to the national interest as, the availability and price of bulk and packaged sugar.

For our part, it would delight us to hear more from His Excellency about our oil wealth. There is not much confidence at both higher and grassroots levels that the Vice President, who has been put in charge of this oil, is really giving Guyana the full truth about its natural resource bonanza lying beneath the seabed.

It would be inspiring to many Guyanese to observe their President putting his arms around this oil bonanza, and getting on top of all that is happening with it, so that every citizen could have a clearer and better understanding of how well it is being managed, and what they can expect from it.

We are concerned, as our many presentations have highlighted, about how the Environmental Protection Agency has been muzzled and made a mockery of by all those who come here to exploit our oil, from both upstream and downstream opportunities. It would help to hear announcements from President Ali as to why this is so, and given what the EPA’s output has been, how come he is not concerned about the possible dangers facing this country, and the likely disastrous consequences that could flow from them. As much as we grapple with trying to understand President Ali’s role in having such an intimate hand in the announcement of the availability and price of sugar, we are even more baffled by his lack of urgency with the vastly bigger and costlier components of this nation’s economy and prospects. It is our hope that the President is not going to see it fit to insert himself next in the ongoing back and forth regarding what is the best type of tractor for the nation’s sugar corporation to spend money on to get the tillage of the planting grounds for cane fields done most efficiently and economically.

There are so many questions that so many Guyanese have on so many important issues in this country, and all occurring at once, and there are so few answers. Even when answers do come from our leaders, and the President is the primary one, they are not clarifying in the least, since they obscure more, and leave more uncertainties in their wake. Guyanese want to know the real story behind procurement surprises. Guyanese have so many concerns about the corruptions that riddle this society into a sieve, and of which we believe that the President knows, but he is not making himself available, or finding it a priority, to speak about in confidence-building terms.

In running to the front to share sweetness about sugar, the President gave off a sickeningly sweet odour in the things he doesn’t speak about, leaves alone.

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