One particular subsidy a total failure

Aug 14, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – President Ali becomes unduly exercised when his government is called to book for failing to help Guyanese as they grapple with a horrendous cost of living crisis.  To put it melodically, there is nothing related to excellence that is heard or discerned about Excellency Ali when he bops and hops around for the right response.  He points to how much has been done, the consistency of the PPP Government’s kindness and care, and how poorly the PNC compares.  I could give a damn about what the PNC did or didn’t do.  The comrade leader should know that that is ancient history, a total irrelevancy, whether from he or the VP.  In American: the president should tell Guyanese what he has done for them lately.  President Ali may rave and rage, but his aid measures haven’t made that much of a difference.  For the edification of the leader who has lost his bearings and became overbearing in that operation, Guyanese are now less impressed with his sales and marketing skills, and much more focused on their highest priority. Putting it nicely, feeding themselves and family daily.  Respectfully, I am compelled to share with the president that one of his own hunger relief priorities has been an abject failure, part of the shams performed here.

Fairness requires that I commend both President Ali and the PPP Government for the hands of financial assistance extended to suffering Guyanese.  But there is one subsidy that is not working, what is now a proven dud.  It is what makes the president looks like a, er, loser: akin to one backing the wrong horse.  It has to do with millions donated to farmers.  Fertilizers, cash, whatever other concessions doled out to farmers that eluded my attention, but for which there is nothing to show.  Nothing returned by farmers.  No reciprocity from farmers.  Not so much as some scant cent and jill relief from farmers.  To repeat, the facts of cost-of-living life speak their own bitter truths.  There is enough for all Guyana to parse through and conclude accordingly.

The PPP Government helped lots of farmers in tangible terms, significant ways that reduced the pressures on their production processes and pockets.  It follows, therefore, that the prices for food items-greens, ground provisions, and all the stuff of the good earth-should reflect a steep decline due to all those subsidies grabbed and absorbed.  At the very least, food prices for the fruits of the soil should have stayed still.  They haven’t.  Somebody took President Ali (and his subsidies) for a ride; perhaps, they even tried to make a monkey’s uncle out of him.  Don’t look at me.  I am not a farmer, and I certainly have not been a beneficiary of any government subsidy.  Nor would I make my president into such a simian creature.  Cost of living reality is that week after week basic agricultural food items to be consumed by regular human beings have blown through the roof and keep soaring into the stratosphere.  It is the equivalent of taking someone’s money and then buying a whip to beat him over the head with it.  I feel sorry for President Ali, for it is his own people giving him a licking, making him look bad.  If I were a farmer, and most of them are of a particular persuasion, my priority would be to make my president look good.  See! Check at all the positives that came from his subsidies.  Housewives are cheerful, mothers and shoppers are giving the president a big, hearty cheer.  Just helping the PPP.  It’s who I am, proud of being a different kind of Guyanese.

Finally, I struggle to suppress the thought that those farm subsidies (also a dirty phrase in America) were really a disguised advance to facilitate later political donations.  The world of Guyana operates that way, doesn’t it.  There is no free lunch, and the PPP is the king of that restaurant counter and cash register.  I will accept everything as being on the up and up with those subsidies, which prompts this humble recommendation to President Ali.  Since those farm subsidies have turned out to be such a poor cost of living (food availability, affordability, and security) investment, stop subsidizing the cheating suppliers and start buttressing the shorthanded demanders.

How high will the farming man, the middleman, the party man, and the conman all pretending at sowing and reaping, raise wholesale prices?  The buyers will be better armed, thanks to the PPP Government’s version of dollars for the distressed.  Take away all those billions from sugar and give it to the people who produce ballots to work (really) and live proudly (honestly, too).  The sellers can go on senselessly charging at Guyanese like the Light Brigade.  Like the British one, they will have to grasp their saddlebags of perishables, reverse their journey, and find use for their food frauds.  It is the hallmark of wisdom to know when to discontinue what does Guyanese little good.  Yank subsidies, spank farmers, crank food shoppers.

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

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• failure, GHK Lall, Guyanese, PPP, President

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