Cash handout-naysayers, doubters, troublemakers shut-up and sit down 

Oct 11, 2024 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – ‘Tek duh!  Tek dah and put it in ayuh pipe and smoke it.’  Thrill to it.   Swoon to it. Every cent of every dollar of the $200,000 cash handout per household just announced by President Ali.  Guyanese got their bright and long anticipated Christmas surprise that they knew was coming since it is an election year.  Not a regular calendar year, but the one that is operated by the PPP.  The good news has several legs to it, which it is my duty, on behalf of the PPP Government, to broadcast to the Guyanese people.

First, the $200,000 cash payout is only the beginning.  There is more to come as the election year lengthens and tightens.  Oh yeah!  It could be as many as two more, with at least one guaranteed.  Hail to Excellency Ali!  Now, all the critics and skeptics who made a living about cost-of-living pressures just got silenced and sent to sit in a corner.  Well, at least for the time being, i.e., until the money is done, and gone. I am going to have to find another topic to replace cost-of-living.  In a cost-of-living land as parched as Guyana, that $200,000 cash payout is sure to get swallowed up in a hurry.  So, there is no need to worry.  Oh man!  Did the merchants just jacked up their prices!  Still, $200,000 is $200,000 in this ‘baad’ and ‘haard’ pore maan season, and a big round of applause for President Ali and the PPP.  The president said that this was going to cost $60 billion, so what is he doing with that $7 billion set aside in the budget as a contingency?

Second, by my calculation, the PPP Government should be announcing another cash handout sometime around one of the big holidays that fall early next year.  Think along the lines of Mashramani or Easter.  With $200,000 as the bar, that is the minimum Guyanese should expect, the government must deliver.  The president can’t guh down.  This could mean elections as early as somewhere between the late second quarter and early in the third quarter, after scaling the CSEC and CAPE fences.  All the political stars would be aligned in the PPP’s favour.  The weather is good.  The people would have had two major cash handouts against their names.  And who would give a second thought to the PNC and/or AFC?  Midyear looks more economically feasible, because a third cash handout would be necessary to keep the people happy and thinking about the PPP if the election is held later in the year.  From a PPP perspective, that is not so wholesome, as a third cash delivery would shorten some of the billions that they would like to ‘teef’.

Third, the backing for next year’s election cash handout(s) would come from another record national budget.  The Budget Office of the Ministry of Finance is already busy at work crunching the numbers.  I foresee a minimum budget of GY$1.5 trillion, with GY$2 trillion for the outside punters.  The bigger the budget, the bigger the envelope that gets dropped into the laps of Guyanese (and the PPP criminal cabal in the background of the sharing).

Fourth, the people in uniform and those other tens of thousands of Guyanese who deal with forms and who must form a line (public servants) will also be in the running for some of the economic goodies that should be pouring out of the previously tightfisted PPP Government.  The overhang (and hangover) of $200,000 from the cash handout serves as the perfect context to push through another 10% pay increase, this time for public servants, if only to demonstrate how kind and caring, as well as compassionate, Excellency Ali and his PPP can be.

Fifth, when President Ali and the PPP Government are done with their cash handouts aka economic relief envelopes, there would be good grounds for them to assert that the million per Guyanese household that political and other groups have long been harping about has since been delivered.  Sure, it is kind of sneaky, rather belatedly, and slippery but that is how the PPP operates, which Guyanese should know by now.  The president may be brave and label his actions taking care of the Guyanese people.  I have got news for him: Guyanese may be bruised and battered and jaded by economic injustices, compliments of a callous and crafty PPP Government, but they are not so out of it as not to recognize an election gimmick in motion.  They will stretch out their hands to collect the cash long due to them, but what they do next with their voting hand is still up in the air.

Finally, now that it is the primetime hour of cash handouts, my recommendation is that every year should be an election year.  Why delay decision-making with this goofiness about a five-year cycle?  Just push the button and let there be an election every year.  The cash and the good times will just roll in.  Did somebody say what about inflation?  Who the hell cares about inflation? Certainly not Dr. Jagdeo, at least not today, when an election hangs over his head like a GPL transmission wire.  A live one.

(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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• contingency, Guyanese, perspective, PPP Government, the President

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