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Jagdeo, the master dodger

Feb 09, 2025 Editorial, News

Editorial

Kaieteur News-The PPP/C Government is all fury about the exposures involving prime State lands.  Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo is on the attack, and targeted prominent attorney Nigel Hughes.  In an effort to wiggle out of yet another tricky, embarrassing development trapping the PPP/C Government, Jagdeo informed Guyanese that Hughes should be the last one to talk about prime lands, since he himself has been a recipient of 75 acres of State lands.  In a new scandal that warps the government, it is the same old Jagdeo.

Jagdeo is that strangest of political animals.  His spots get bigger than they were before, and then he paints others with spots of his own choosing.  It is how he struggles less than manfully to diminish the ugliness in the 35 acres of prime State lands in Ogle by trying to pin one on Hughes.  The PPP/C Government has a scandal of immense proportions on its hands, a tiger by the tail, and the vice-president tries to distract from that situation by dragging Hughes into the land picture.

The 35 acres awarded to a group in which a Guyanese born convicted fraudster, Ed Ahmad, is a part of, are prime lands.  These acres are in the growing commercial hub that is Ogle.  ExxonMobil has its headquarters there.  There is a thriving commercial airport there.  And there is intensifying interest from the entrepreneurial-minded, both foreign and local, to snare a piece of land there to set shop.  Ogle looks set to soar from its former placid state to a profitmaking machine for the bold and resourceful.  The price of an acre of land in Ogle, therefore, should be going higher, not lower.  Mark that lower price as one consideration from the government (the Central Planning & Housing Authority) to the Ed Ahmad group in New York.  The Ogle land is only one slice of the acreage handed to his group, with awards stretching from Diamond to Lethem, with stops in Leonora and elsewhere.

On the other hand, the 75 acres that Jagdeo dug up and threw in Hughes’ face are not anywhere to what could be called competitive strips.  Of the 75 acres, 50 were leased from Simon Munroe back in 2016, and are located off the beaten track in Essequibo.  For emphasis, it is a private transaction between citizens and with documents to prove.  We make no defence for Hughes, for he can do that well by himself.  It is worthy to note that he has said that he would welcome any investigation into his land dealings.  We use the Jagdeo-Hughes situation, in essence what is a confrontation, to point out how the PPP/C Government and Jagdeo react when cornered by scandal.  Jagdeo tries every kind of trick as he seeks to redirect the nation’s attention to critics and opponents.  Hughes shouldn’t talk, because he has big pieces of land also.  Those who know the vice president and party general secretary well, are quick to pick up that it’s not so much what he ventilates in the public domain, but how much he leaves out.

Jagdeo has earned a special reputation as a leader who would work any scheme to slip out of tricky corners.  The prime land scandal, with Ed Ahmad’s company name written all over it and the PPP/C Government deep in it, stands as the latest in a long line of such schemes.  There is prime land versus forested land and Hughes.  There is government involvement and arrangement for land awarded at a friendly price in Ogle versus Hughes’s lease lands in a private transaction.  Then, there is Jagdeo, true to form, doing what he does best, with his half-baked defences that target others.  It is artful dodging by one who is a past master at such gyrations intended to pull the wool over the eyes of Guyanese.  It is what Bharrat Jagdeo has made his modus operandi in almost every area in which he shows his face.

Jagdeo is a picture of dodginess with oil and gas, through what is hidden, what he dilutes.  From billions in oil expenses to the US$2B Wales gas-to-energy project, he dodges and dilutes, destroys himself.  Now he is at it again with prime State lands.

(Jagdeo, the master dodger)

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