Jagdeo and his PPP ministers think they can bully, con and lie to Guyanese forever

Jul 19, 2023 Letters

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Dear Editor,

One of the sad realities of Guyana is that with a close to 50 percent poverty rate, not many of us can afford to buy newspapers on a regular basis to keep up to date on what is going on in the country.  A consequence of this is that voters such as sugar workers who are pivotal to changing the folly that continues in government remain in a state of ignorance, often depending on Government-influenced media and propaganda for their news and information.  The consequence of this is blind support for a government which continues to take advantage of Guyanese in almost every sphere of life.

It has always been my contention that the administration of the PPP under the leadership of Bharrat Jagdeo has no respect, care or regard for Guyanese, that they have been actively and deliberately engaged in policy aimed at keeping the Guyanese masses impoverished and in a state of arrested development while they and their cronies in the business community engorge themselves on money from the national treasury through government-issued projects.  Had Jagdeo and his PPP administration had Guyana’s welfare at heart, GUYSUCO would have already been closed, its workers compensated and provided with land and all the support necessary to become financially sustainable, Public Service workers on the minimum wage would have been receiving around $150,000-$200,000/month, pensioners about $200,000/month, rice farmers would have never been robbed by millers and suffered financial losses, including the loss of their farms, Guyana would have had much better schools, teachers adequately compensated, and children would have been performing much better in schools and getting better grades at their CXC examinations, becoming better able to get a job and start in life.  These broad measures would have led to higher incomes nationally on account of the larger money in circulation, an immensely better life, standard of living, welfare for the larger Guyanese population.  But this was not to be. Because we understand now that Jagdeo and the PPP are not interested in Guyanese becoming financially independent, not interested in them becoming aware of Jagdeo’s and the PPP’s malfeasances in office, not interested in having Guyanese become aware of the perversion and lawlessness upon which the PPP has always stood.

As it stands right now, Jagdeo and his PPP Ministers are at war with Guyanese and civil society over everything from the outrageous GOG-Exxon contract, to mismanagement of Government facilities which led to the Mahdia fire, to the sexual abuse and silencing of a little girl by a PPP minister. Add in the financial blackhole that is GUYSUCO, the PPP’s disregard of public servants, particularly teachers, and we come to understand how the PPP was thrown out of office in 2015.  I noticed Jagdeo at some forum talking to people recently. After impoverishing them, he turns around and talks about solutions to the problems he maintained over the years, and his government gives hand-outs and house-lots to the very people his administration has been oppressing, and turns and says, “see, we are working for you. Vote for us.”

Whether children, public servant, rice farmer or sugar worker, the man in the street, all have been taken advantage of abused and mistreated.  All have suffered under an education system designed to benefit the PPP’s  acolytes while the fate of the rest of Guyanese is one of engineered failure, the full results of which continue to be a guarded secret every year, with many Guyanese unable to compete for and get proper paying jobs. To this day, there has never been a declaration of how any children failed their exams, got grades IV and V.  There is something dead wrong with our education system. Public servants have always been trampled upon, taken advantage of, abused and robbed of their fair wages by the Jagdeo administration’s continued trampling of regulatory guidelines for Public Servants’ salary negotiations, and are forced to live in a state of insufficiency where they cannot take care of their children, much less send them to private school to escape the failures our education system has been maintained to ensure that they become. The persons who plundered rice farmers continue to walk free, enjoying the fruits of their piracy under the PPP Government, and sugar workers continue to be maintained in a state of ignorance and economic twilight zone as the Jagdeo administration continues to pump billions and billions of dollars into GuySuCo even as the corporation has long died and become a drain on our national resources, with an excess of $60-100 billion dollars of taxpayers’ money estimated to have being pumped into it over the decades, not including the $40 billion wasted by Jagdeo alone when he disregarded all advice against investing in the white elephant Skeldon factory.  All of this money Jagdeo could have shared out to sugar workers and provided support and land until they became financially independent.

Jagdeo and his PPP administration in their unmistakable ‘nut job’ mentality facilitated the transfer of $8.4 billion (US$42 million) on the road-to-nowhere Amaila Falls project to Fip Motilall and whoever else was willing to sign up for the completion of the road https://demerarawaves.com/2015/08/21/amaila-falls-road-to-be-completed-although-hydro-power-station-scrapped/. This was a project the IDB would not look at because there was no feasibility study. Jagdeo and his PPP administration facilitated the rape of the national treasury by running a scheme where their acolytes fed themselves on government contracts which lacked adequate oversight, so that roads especially almost always fell apart almost immediately after completion, requiring never ending, continuous repairs and never-ending flow of funds for their acolytes and themselves.

Jagdeo and his PPP administration have wasted $40 billion dollars in taxpayers’ money on the Skeldon Sugar factory.

Jagdeo and his PPP administration facilitated the financial incapacity of the National Insurance Scheme through glaring regulatory breaches of the institution’s framework regarding managing of its investment funds in which approximately $5.7 billion was lost in the busted CLICO investment scheme, and $X millions was channeled into building the Berbice Bridge, allowing the bridge’s investors to turn around and charge Guyanese a pound and a crown to cross, greatly incapacitating economic activity in New Amsterdam and the rest of Berbice east of the Berbice River.

Jagdeo and his PPP administration facilitated the rape and robbery of rice farmers and their families over the years. Jagdeo and his PPP administration have overseen the abuse and impoverishment of public servants and their children.

Jagdeo and his PPP administration have maintained a failed discriminatory education system where schools continue to be maintained to enforce his system of economic degradation the masses, with children in outlying areas being the worst off.

Jagdeo and his PPP administration continue to maintain sugar workers like cattle to vote for the PPP.

Today Jagdeo continues to order Irfaan Ali and Government to disregard civil society’s claims to have the ridiculous Exxon contract which makes Guyanese liable for Exxon’s income taxes and sets up a framework for probably the greatest economic piracy ever in the world since slavery and Indian indentureship, scrapped/renegotiated on better terms.  We have a government where our president is a puppet of Jagdeo.

Jagdeo and his government ministers maintain that they are not taking bribes, there is no corruption. These are hard facts. Deny, deny, deny.

Under Bharat Jagdeo and his PPP government ministers, Guyana is a plundered nation. They will continue to use terror tactics to ridicule our professionals who vehemently stand up to them, frighten and keep us ignorant as they throttle persons who expose their lawless and corrupt behaviour.  Why did that innocent little girl reverse her claims on Dharamlall? Under the oversight of the Child Care and Protection Agency? We need nothing else to prove this government’s lawlessness. Big grown men taking advantage of our girl children. Need we ask what next?

Jagdeo and the PPP continue to think as they did in 2015 that Guyanese people are stupid, that he and the PPP can continue to bully, con and lie to Guyanese forever.  We have already lost in excess of two decades to their economic debaucher and tyranny.  What do we do with a government that thinks we are stupid? As we did in 2015, we throw them out of office.  Only this time, we install a better government.  Guyana has just about two years to get twenty people to form a full government for the DNC, start a campaign and win 50 percent of the votes in 2025.  It‘s time to step up and offer Guyana better leadership, better government than Jagdeo and his acolytes.  Guyanese need you now!

Regards,

Craig Sylvester

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• Bharrat Jagdeo, Craig Sylvester, Guyana, Guyanese, newspapers

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