The PPP foiled our ‘lucky achievement’

Jan 27, 2025 Letters

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Dear Editor,

‘Mr. Speaker, I rise to present to this House the biggest budget ever presented to any Legislature in British Guyana’ (PNC-UF Coalition Minister of Finance, Mr. Peter D’Aguiar, 1965). Four and a half decades later: ‘Mr. Speaker, the size of this budget is $128.9 billion, 8.1 per cent higher than last year’s budget, making it Guyana’s largest budget ever’ (PPP Finance Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh, 2009).

This chant has been around for years and here we are today with a humongous budget of $1.4 trillion but the people are still comparatively suffering as the People’s Progressive Party’s (PPP) government, using the colonialist’s strategy of ‘divide and rule,’ squanders much of the wealth that the country has been fortuitously bequeathed to dazzle the population with infrastructure etc., of questionable quality.

Allow me to divert somewhat to a similar tragedy with more immediate important ramifications. Stabroek News reported that the chair of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), decided against biometrics at the upcoming polls. She ‘acknowledged the arguments for and against the introduction of biometric systems, particularly digital fingerprint capture during voter registration and at polling stations. She noted that while there is no legal barrier to GECOM implementing a digital fingerprint system, the introduction of such a technology in time for the 2025 elections faces significant challenges.’ The important ones are, she said, the holding of stakeholder consultations, consulting with the government and parliament to put in place new legislation, funding and procurement of the necessary equipment, the training of staff and public education (SN: 23/01/2025).

To make the process of implementing biometrics the reason for not doing so is to concede that there is merit in the position that the introduction of biometrics will, at the very least, be useful. Added to this, a dissection of why the chairperson feels that the system cannot be implemented in time for the 2025 elections scheduled in November, clearly demonstrates an intention to deceive the public.

Having to hold consultations with the government and parliament to determine whether biometrics should be introduced should not take more than a day. GECOM has been designed to be and is controlled by the major stakeholders who have the support of 90% of the voting population! Indeed, given the partisan public meanderings of its commissioners, this stance is nothing more than a subterfuge to take refuge in the theoretical notion of GECOM being an independent body.  Also, GECOM is so designed that consultations with the other stakeholders can be nothing else than informative.

Decision-making of this sort needs to be segmented based upon one’s core responsibilities. Once GECOM had decided that biometrics would be useful, its duty was to publicly make this point and recommend that the government and opposition provide the necessary legislation and funding. On these matters the buck stops with the parliamentary politicians. But since the opposition has already signalled its support, the duty of the chairperson of an independent body would be to privately, and if necessary, publicly, encourage, urge and implore, the government to join in providing these requirements. As for the technical issues such as procurement and training, a professionally completed timeline must be made public to support this point. This column has already mentioned that Ghana, a country with a population of 25 million and 26,000 polling stations, completed a similar biometrics arrangement in six weeks.

But let us not fool ourselves: what we are faced with is an amateurish attempt to deceive.  The truth of the matter is that following the example of our bellicose neighbour, the chair of the elections commission appears complicit with the PPP in its efforts to extend its ethnic/political dominance.

So let us return to the budget and the immediate futility. As noted, the increasing size of the budget has not improved the comparative wellbeing of the people. During the period under discussion not only have we been politically murdering each other but Guyana is lagging behind on almost every international development index. Notwithstanding all the talk about a return to democracy, Guyana has been officially classified as nearing a dictatorship and this is perhaps why the speaker of the National Assembly, having visited India, which is an autocracy, felt comfortable to follow its banning of political terms such a ‘corruption’ that need to flourish if dictatorial regimes are to be brought to heel.

Politicians in Guyana keep harping upon ‘bigness’ as a major achievement, largely because the population has been taught to be input rather that output sensitive. It is generally assumed that more spending means more and better services, but our history in relation to the provision of almost every governmental service has demonstrated that this position is false. Achievements are characterized by the fact that the process towards their completion is difficult, and the product has been competently completed. To properly assess how Guyana has progressed, one only needs to consider governments’ historical management of: electricity, health, education, transportation, poverty alleviation, the justice system and local democracy, not to mention Guysuco!

But to be fair to the PPP, there is a more academic way of looking at the notion of achievement. If something turns out to be great/good but luck played a crucial role in bringing it about, then we can call this a lucky achievement. Oil was found in substantial quantities during the latter part of the previous 2011 to 2015 PPP regime, and that is ‘great’ and provided the opportunity for governments to create their ‘lucky achievement’ by doing great things. But what has this foundational ‘lucky’ brought to the people of Guyana? Not much: they are still migrating in droves as the PPP, focused upon its policy of keeping itself in government at all costs, spends billions on all manner of projects of questionable relevance and quality.

Since it is focused upon buying votes, the regime abhors giving constitutionally/legally determined universal or objectively targeted support to the population. It wants to be in the position to discriminate to maintain and increase its support. So that a universal or targeted basic income that will better deal with the question of absolute poverty is substituted by one off, $100,000-type grants for all manner of things.  For example, it believes that all it needs to do to show it cares is to designate a programme ‘because we care’, give cash grants to school schoolchildren without an adequate social welfare and accountability systems to see that the children go to school and are progressing. Indeed, given the relationship between poverty, truancy, dropouts, etc., I suspect that an ethnicity assessment of the associated negativities will expose another disquieting dimension.

Again, while appropriate in our present financial context, increasing the income tax threshold to $130,000 per month does not benefit the unemployed and poor.  This requires something like a universal basic income beginning, if necessary, with the poorest. Also, after all these years to simply state that one has distributed 40,000 house lots is not necessarily an achievement for it may not be best use of resources. After all, when the PPP came to government some three decades ago, about 170,000 existed and since then it must have created another 230,000. Thus, there now exist some 400,000 house lots for about 500,000 adults when the average household is about 4 persons. If the above holds, surely, the regime should now be focused upon the equitable utilisation of what has already been distributed, but again I suspect that latter is not politically/ethnically sensible.

So even when fortune smiled upon Guyana and the PPP is provided with the material foundation to do great things and thus create our ‘lucky achievement,’ this is foiled by its drive for ethnic/political domination.

Sincerely,

Dr Henry Jeffrey

(The PPP foiled our ‘lucky achievement’)

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• biometric systems, Guyana Elections Commission, largest budget ever, Mr. Peter D’Aguiar

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