Hiding information

Dec 20, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – If the PPPC Government can think of what is against the interests of Guyanese, and then actually moving to make it happen, then there is no limit to where it would go, and what its people would do.

Since the PPPC Government actually moved to do what it did with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), then it does not take a genius to figure out what it would do with other foreign players, other bigger developments with huge impacts for this country. What the PPPC Government did, stumbles the imagination (“Govt. tells IDB not to disclose all information on US$97M loan for Health Sector” -KN December 18). Is this a government looking out for the interests of the people who elected it to office? Or is it one that is mostly concerned about its image, and what is beneficial to its visions and, ultimately, the pockets of its crooked cabal of loyalists? We are left with no choice but to answer in the negative for the first question, and ‘yes’ to the second.

An extract from the IDB itself speaks to the continuing chronic secrecies of this PPPC Government: “At the request of the borrowing country, the information contained in this document will not be disclosed.” It could be inferred from this IDB wording that what was withheld would have been released by it under the ordinary course of its loan disclosures. There is nothing about a US$97M loan to enhance the public health sector that should be secret, with Guyanese being kept in ignorance. Yet this is exactly what the government decided was protective of its own priorities, interests, fears. Considering the ongoing culture of secrecy, and shortchanging Guyanese of what they need to know, concealing information has now risen to the state of paranoia within the PPPC Government and its leadership.

We do not think that there would be information in an IDB loan agreement that would disadvantage Guyana. Certainly not with what has to do with borrowing millions of American dollars to expand capacity and improve the quality of health services at seven priority local hospitals. The IDB loan is for more capacity, higher efficiency, and better quality at these seven health institutions, yet the government sees it fit to block Guyanese from being privy to the details of this US$97M loan. What could be cooking in this instance? What new, unpleasant, and costly surprise that those in charge of governance in this country could be concocting to pull some more fast ones on citizens?

Almost US$900M was borrowed or budgeted in the last three years for the nation’s health sector, and Guyanese are near the same place with regard to what is available, in such basics as medicines and tests. Instead of the government being focused on giving Guyanese value for every dollar borrowed, the PPPC brain trust is more consumed with hiding information from Guyana, of conspiring at every level of governance on how to mislead and abuse Guyanese still further. This is what is held out as transparency and accountability.

Considering this deplorable state of governance and leadership with something as ordinary and uncomplicated as a loan for the health sector, one reasonably wonders what the PPPC Government and its agents could be doing with our massive oil wealth, and other areas in our rich natural resources sector. It stands to reason that there is crucial information that Guyanese should know, but which government operators have partnered with foreign companies to duck and hide from Guyanese eyes. Our rich oil and mining sectors are where huge revenue streams are involved, and where there is room for endless wheeling and dealing by crooked Guyanese politicians and their handpicked cronies on one side of the table, and officials of foreign companies on the other.

Wherever we turn, and whatever is under consideration, that concerns millions, Guyanese are getting tricked and cheated. This is why there is this continuing desire for, and practice of, secrecy in almost everything that this PPPC Government puts its hands upon. When information on a loan for the health sector is off-limits, then it is no surprise that oil matters and mining contracts, among many key things, are handled in the same secretive, possibly, criminal manner.

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