President Ali and cash handouts

Sep 22, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali is seemingly gifted with an extraordinary aptitude for doubletalk, or walking back what he once held close to his chest, and made a centerpiece of his programmes.

Handouts represent one instance of startling presidential admissions, or yielding to reality, before international inquirers and audiences. What is conspicuous is how President Ali is all big talk and tough walk at home before the local media, and how he is an altogether more patient, respectful, and occasionally forthright presence when dealing with foreign questioners. He has done this a while back with Al-Jazeera, and just recently with the BBC.

We, and other citizens of this country, have expressed misgivings about handouts, be they in cash or other form. Neither the President nor his PPP/C Government has looked with favour on Guyanese who quietly questioned certain programmes put into motion. The handouts were one such programme, and our position was that it was not sustainable, that it was prone to significant corruption, and that there has to be better ways for government to offer relief to Guyanese. Not more than those feeling the bite of food inflation and the pressures of daily existence in oil rich Guyana. The President has usually dismissed those Guyanese who questioned the wisdom and integrity of the cash handouts, as he manifested an increasing sensitivity to inquiries. President Ali is pleased, and is of the thinking that he serves the nation better, by pigeonholing Guyanese he finds to be disagreeable as naysayers and critics without substance.

Now, there he was before the BBC, except the President was singing from a new songbook and a song with eerie echoes. He said, “we have to ensure that there is greater transparency and accountability in the management of the resources.” The question may be legitimately asked is whether Guyana’s head-of-state just fired a warning shot across the bow of the rampaging Vice President relative to the secrecies that have plagued the oil and gold sectors, and which secrecies have featured prominently under Jagdeo’s watch. The President himself has been forced to backpedal and dance from foot to foot in his futile efforts to explain and defend the lack of the same transparency and accountability about which he speaks. They are what have come to be inseparable characteristics of most things that Jagdeo puts his hands on.

What was significant also was that the President noted that ‘using resources as handout are popular in the short-term, however in the long term, it is detrimental to the country and is not the route his administration will take.’ Undoubtedly, that certainly has a different ring to what the President and his government have been engaged in with much enthusiasm (handouts). It is what has been used to make much government and party propaganda hay out of, to hold Guyanese hostage, to bring them to their knees to beg leaders for help, and to make them feel indebted to political leaders. Reports are that more than their rightful share of handouts have been given to friends, and handouts have also been withheld from those not perceived to be loyalists or, worse still, opponents of the ruling party.

When many citizens in an oil rich country are struggling and hurting, the thought of what is popular is in and of itself an insult and an abomination. From the inception, we have said it is what would work in the long run. We have always said and stood by one standard: almost half in the Guyanese population are in urgent need of meaningful and sustained assistance. The handouts, though helpful, have all the endurance of a Band-Aid, or some homemade poultice. It is encouraging, therefore, to learn that President Ali has shifted his previous position on handouts, which gave every indication of being set in stone. It is time for the PPP/C Government to introduce a programme of relief that has material salary increases, tax relief, and other cost-of-living relief measures as part of a long-term plan that makes a difference in the lives of the statistically richest people in the world. All of this is long overdue; it is time to be rid of the temporary and the piecemeal approach.

audiences, Editorial, inquirers, International, programmes

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President Ali and cash handouts

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President Ali and cash handouts

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