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Land deals – shady ones

Feb 19, 2025 Features / Columnists, News

Editorial…

Kaieteur News-  The resignation of the Central Housing & Planning Authority (CH&PA) Chief Executive Officer, Sherwyn Greaves is a step in the right direction.  It is, however, not the end of the questionable land deal matters, but just the beginning.  It is helpful that Vice President Jagdeo ran to his rescue with firm pronouncements about the PPP/C Government’s confidence in the former CEO.  But that cannot be all there is to the range of land deal issues, controversial when given a kind interpretation, or seemingly flooded with corruption when looked at critically.  There has to be more that the government is zealous about doing, more to get to the truths of these foul land dealings, more to expose the network of beneficiaries, both here and overseas.

Corruption in Guyana today, under the PPP/C Government, can be compared to the Great Flood that inundated huge swaths of this country at the beginning of the millennium.  Guyana is drowning under the weight of corruption, which has now become unbearable.  There is corruption in public procurement, corruption in the management of Guyana’s natural resources, and corruption in the way that the business of the people is conducted in their highest forum.  Now, there are these developments involving sweetheart land deals that stink of corruption.  Huge tracts of prime land given to a small cabal of PPP/C Government friends.  Some of them are so suspect, the deals reek so much, that other Guyanese hustle to distance from them.  Defences raised by recipients generate more questions, and they are not of the friendly variety.  Credibility is at a low level, even nonexistent, relative to those who were awarded prime State lands, and the politicians who try to wish away what went on.  The prime land dealings are so massive that they cannot be wished away just like that, because one man hopes so.

Vice President Jagdeo must know that he himself is not thought of highly by Guyanese.  He must know that some of his party’s longtime faithful look at him with disbelief when he defends certain developments that give off that rank smell.  The prime State land deals involving dozens of acres are a case in point.  Rank-and-file Guyanese are struggling to get a house lot for their families, as part of their upward mobility, and they are stuck for years in the government’s bureaucracy.  Citizens line up and show up for years for a mere one-eight of an acre of house land, only to read about how land deal games operate behind the scenes.  It is how politicians and their friends cook things up, fix them to their rich advantage.

Jagdeo can continue to play his usual games, hold his press shows, but Guyanese can see for themselves that there is some level of corruption in the land deals now engaging the rapt attention of the nation.  How deep does the corruption go, how many public servants and politicians have their hands in the ugly mix, what is the quid pro quo for the crooks that enrich themselves at the expense of the people?  These are questions that will not disappear because Jagdeo has that kind of interest, pretends that nothing is out of place at the CH&PA.  He can rave and rant as long as he wants about how many acres the APNU+AFC Coalition gave away at cut prices to its friends in its time.  But that does not in any way minimize or remove the pall of suspicion that hang over these land deals.

Jagdeo’s word has long lost whatever weight it once had.  Though he is sure to dispute that angrily, he knows that that is what he has done to himself.  He knows also that he has only himself to blame.  His excesses over the years have accumulated and now come back to weaken any defences he makes for others, and diminish any cause that he makes as his own.  He has failed citizens too often, he has failed Guyanese on the big things, with the most high-profile of all, oil, hanging like an albatross around his neck.  Only an independent probe, with comprehensive terms of reference, would suffice relative to these seemingly corrupt land deals encircling politicians and their friends.

(Land deals – shady ones)

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