‘What vision? Failure beckons’

Apr 21, 2025 Letters

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Dear Editor

A few days ago, following a chant the PPP would like us all to repeat, it was reported that Mr. Brian Tiwarie the well-known owner of BK International, stated that contrary to what is a widespread perception, he had never left the PPP but is now publicly clarifying his support for  that party because he is particularly impressed with its infrastructural vision: ‘When you look and see the infrastructure in Guyana…this is amazing’ (SN: 18/04/2025).

Firstly, as I will indicate below, the PPP’s infrastructural record is not impressive: it is the result of sheer luck and is being suboptimal implemented. Secondly, it is the tradition for dictatorial/autocratic governments to attempt the sell their worth by showcasing infrastructure development, and it is not wise, when speaking of national management, to try to disaggregate the national vision in the manner Tiwarie has done. Adolph Hitler came to government by way of a democratic election, captured the German state and turned it into a dictatorship, and the Nazi party had an impressive infrastructural record, constructing thousands of roads, major highways, public buildings, parks, etc., but it simultaneously initiated a war that caused the death of more that 50 million people and built many execution factories.

A national vision is a view of what the country will look like in the future set within a defined direction of planning and the execution of its various strategies. Undoubtedly, Guyana badly needs a national strategic vision. In 2020, addressing issues having to do with the Guyana Sugar Corporation, I stated that, ‘What is required if the sugar [and, I may now add, the oil] industry is to rise above its present condition is radical political reforms that will hold the politicians accountable and more specifically allow the development and transmission of a national strategic vision’ (‘The absence of strategic vision.’ SN: 01/01/2020).

Today, no one could sensibly demonstrate that over the last 25 years of its rule, the PPP has even tried to develop a national strategic vision. Remember, in 2004, Jimmy Carter stated that the party had abandoned the bipartisan National Development Strategy that was initiated by Cheddi Jagan. Indeed, with increasing wealth, the situation has become worse, as like autocratic regimes everywhere, the main concern of the PPP is to stay in government forever.  It is at present no more than an ethnic oligarchy that has captured the state and is using it for its own ends, including coercing and manipulating other ethnic groups to join its ranks if they wish to succeed and have a decent life.

The situation has reached a stage where representative African leaders have presented a sufficient prima facie case accusing the regime of creating an apartheid state.  With the amount of resources presently at its disposal one would have thought that, as occurred elsewhere, where national government care about the welfare of all its people, the PPP would by now have conducted an impartial ethnic disparity analysis to debunk such claims. However, knowing the claims to be true, the regime has taken to regurgitating its usually unsubstantiated propagandistic nonsense (‘Alexander is part of the problem, never part of the solution!’ SN: 18/04/2025).  The fact that the PPP needs to hand pick those of other ethnicities to represent its African citizens at conferences such as those held by the International Decade for People of African Descent, tell the true story of its vision!

Notwithstanding the resources it has fortuitously come upon, its One Guyana, electricity, sugar cane, GOAL scholarship, Silica City, men with a mission, infrastructure, unilateral handouts, etc., provide ample examples of uncaring, undemocratic and visionlessness government.

For instance, the regime is a signatory to the United Nations 2020-30 development goals and the first goal calls upon states to end poverty in all its forms everywhere by, among other things, implementing nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including floors (universal basic income), and by 2030 achieving substantial coverage of the poor and the vulnerable.  Instead of providing a comprehensive programme that, if necessary, initially targets and provides some financial certainty and independence for the most vulnerable; focused upon winning elections by way of coercion, the regime is providing numerous unstructured, one off, unilateral handouts designed to keep the citizenry under its thumb and entrench its dictatorship.

Aside from the construction of its signature ‘concussion’ highways, the government is refurbishing numerous community roads in the same dimensions they at presently are, i.e., where two cars can hardly pass and there is little place for parking, although many more vehicles are daily entering the country. They are misusing national resources in this manner not simply because they lack vision, but because in the haste to win votes for the next elections the choice has been made for more roads rather than more appropriate quality community roads. Furthermore, to optimally use resources to construct the better roads will require national consensus which, as we have seen above, the PPP has already rejected. Its determination to stay in government has dictated a short-term dictatorial approach that does not allow the policy space and content inclusive governance would facilitate.

According to the Charter of the National Resource Governance Institute, government has the responsibility to manage resources for current and future generations, and effective and sustainable resource management requires an inclusive and comprehensive national strategy. Its first precept states that ‘the government must make a series of key decisions that will affect different groups and set choices extending far into the future. To avoid making decisions in a piecemeal fashion – as is happening in Guyana today for political mobilisation reasons – and to build a shared sense of direction, governments should, in dialogue with all stakeholders (https://resourcegovernance. org/sites/default /files/NRCJ1193_ natural_resource_charter_19.6.14.pdf.

The Charter argues that the transformation from wealth in the ground to wider societal benefits can take many years and present many challenges and surprises along the way. Therefore, ‘Decision makers should seek to incorporate the inputs of all associated stakeholders, to provide the necessary understanding of issues that must be addressed in the planning process…Good governance is required across the entire decision chain and this calls for building understanding and consensus from a critical mass of informed citizens. Actors outside the executive, including legislators, journalists, and civil society groups are guardians of the strategy, playing a scrutinizing role by holding decision-makers to account. . . Too often the transformation of resource wealth into prosperity fails not because of a lack of the correct economic policies but because of a weak underlying system of governance. Resource governance requires decisionmakers to be accountable to an informed public. Where resource wealth is managed on behalf of citizens, it can lead to sustained prosperity only if the government is publicly accountable.’

Even its most ardent supporters would find it difficult to make the case that the PPP government is accountable to the Guyanese public. Failure beckons!

Sincerely

Dr. Henry Jeffrey

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• Guyana, Guyana Sugar Corporation, Mr. Brian Tiwarie, PPP, PPP’s infrastructural record

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