Jagdeo’s policies were a disaster

Jan 09, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Peeping Tom…

Kaieteur News- Bharrat Jagdeo’s proclamation of his party’s approach to reducing income inequality is a tutorial in political sleight of hand. At his weekly press conference last Thursday, Jagdeo laid bare his government’s strategy to tackle this age-old scourge.

The PPPC’s strategy, according to Jagdeo involves creating employment, ensuring higher-paying jobs through education, improving healthcare, and promoting wealth accumulation via housing. Yet, as one unpacks Jagdeo’s gilded declarations, the glaring contradictions and historical failures of this neo-liberal model surface, exposing the inherent inequality embedded in its very design.

Jagdeo’s faith in the neo-liberal model is neither new nor surprising. Since 1992, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPPC) has adhered to a playbook that champions market-driven solutions, privatization, liberalization and private sector development.

While this approach has undeniably fostered the emergence of a middle class, it has also exacerbated the chasm between the lower, middle, and upper classes. Income inequality, rather than narrowing, has widened, leaving a significant portion of the population grappling with poverty and economic disenfranchisement.

Jagdeo’s policies were a disaster when it came to reducing inequality in Guyana. A World Bank document noted the following: “The 2017 Labor Force Survey (LFS) suggests that Guyana’s poverty rate is among the highest in the region, at 43.4 percent in 2017, using the upper-middle income poverty line (US$5.5 a day 2011 PPP). Moreover, during the phase of sustained growth between 2006 and 2017, the income of the bottom 40 percent grew slower than the average, resulting in increased income inequality, with the Gini coefficient, rising from 0.46 to 0.48.”

Yet Jagdeo persists today with the same prescriptions that failed him and successive PPPC governments. When will he learn that his medicine is making the country sicker; when will he change?

Employment creation, Jagdeo’s first pillar in reducing inequality, is emblematic of the neo-liberal model’s shortcomings. The absence of a living wage undermines any potential benefits of increased employment. While jobs may have been created, they are often low-paying, insecure, and incapable of lifting workers out of poverty. This failure is compounded by the government’s alignment with the bourgeois class, which has stymied efforts to converge the national minimum wage with the public service minimum wage. Such actions reveal the government’s priorities: safeguarding the interests of the elite at the expense of the working class.

The government’s investments in education are touted as a means to ensure higher-paying jobs. But these have yielded dismal results. Despite significant spending, more than 50% of students fail school-leaving examinations at both the primary and secondary levels. This statistic is an indictment of the education system and the structural inequities it perpetuates. The PPPC’s education policy is characterized by surface-level interventions and social media posturing. It lacks the vision and depth required to address the root causes of educational underperformance.

An enlightened education policy would prioritise quality over quantity, equity over access, and outcomes over optics. It would recognise that ringing school bells and posing for Facebook photos do little to bridge the educational divide. The current approach further entrenches inequality.

Jagdeo’s claim that the government’s housing program promotes wealth accumulation is perhaps the most audacious of his assertions. While it is true that many poor families have accessed housing through government schemes, the programme’s inherent flaws have allowed the rich to benefit disproportionately. The practice of acquiring house lots using irrevocable powers of attorney, a loophole exploited by the wealthy to bypass regulations, underscores the inequities within the system.

A casual glance at government housing schemes reveals the stark contrast between the modest homes of the poor and the opulent mansions of the rich. These discrepancies raise serious questions about the government’s commitment to equitable housing policies. If Jagdeo is sincere about addressing inequality, he must confront the uncomfortable truth: the government’s housing program has become a vehicle for wealth accumulation among the elite rather than a tool for poverty alleviation.

Even more concerning is the issue of land ownership. The concentration of land ownership remains a persistent concern. When the PPPC assumed office in 1992, 5% of the population owned 75% of the land.  Thirty-two years later, Jagdeo has yet to provide data to demonstrate any meaningful redistribution.

If the government is serious about reducing inequality, it must abandon its reliance on the neo-liberal model and adopt a holistic, bottom-up approach. This begins with the implementation of a national poverty reduction scheme targeted at the poorest of the poor, including through direct transfers to the neediest.

A living wage must become the keystone of employment policy. The government’s failure to converge the national minimum wage with the public service minimum wage reflects a lack of political will rather than economic constraints. By ensuring that all workers earn a wage that meets their basic needs, the government can take a significant step towards reducing income inequality.

In education, the focus must shift from access to equity. Education policy should aim to create a level playing field, enabling all students to achieve their potential regardless of their socio-economic background. Housing policy, too, requires a fundamental overhaul. The government must clamp down on the exploitation of loopholes and ensure that housing schemes serve their intended beneficiaries. An audit should be conducted to determine whether persons who previously owned property illegally benefitted from government’s housing programme and these lots must be repossessed immediately and distributed to the poor. To invoke the rhetoric of reducing inequality while adhering to policies that exacerbate it is not only misleading but also an affront to the tens of thousands of Guyanese who continue to struggle in the face of growing inequality.

The neo-liberal model, which underpins Jagdeo’s policies, is inherently unequal. It prioritizes economic growth over social equity, wealth accumulation over wealth distribution, and market efficiency over human dignity. By perpetuating this model, the government has entrenched inequality rather than alleviated it. How come Jagdeo has not learnt this in his long career?

It is time for Jagdeo and his government to confront the failures of the past three decades and chart a new course—one that places the needs of the many above the interests of the few. If Jagdeo wishes to be remembered as a champion of the people rather than a steward of the elite, he must abandon the neo-liberal playbook and embrace a vision of governance that prioritizes equality. But then again, you cannot teach an old dog new tricks!

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

(Jagdeo’s policies were a disaster)

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• dismal results, Jagdeo’s policies, market-driven solutions, neo-liberal, Peeping Tom, People’s Progressive Party Civic

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