Dear Editor,
I would like to add some reflective notes on your editorial for Stabroek Business captioned “The Customs racket: No one is protected” (08.04.14) and Mr. Kit Nascimento’s letter captioned “Broadcasters are held to a high standard of public responsibility” (08.04.19) on the four month suspension of channel 6 (Saturday). Whoever wrote the Stabroek Business editorial is not a person who studies political behaviour in Guyana. The commentator consistently cited strong and no-nonsense sentiments from Mr. Jagdeo as the President lamented corruption at the GRA wharf operations. But that is Mr. Jagdeo’s style. Mr. Jagdeo has been in power now for eight years and he has two convenient methodologies that in the end lacerate his credibility and cause disrespect for him by the citizenry.
One is that he prefers to deny the existence of embarrassing moments rather than diplomatically avoid that approach. Three times (not once or twice) Mr. Jagdeo intervened and scrapped the advertisement and search committee for a new Vice-Chancellor at UG. To date he denies that episode of presidential autocracy that Mr Burnham was far more learned and politically educated to avoid. Mr. Jagdeo went so far as to tell a post-press conference gathering that he didn’t know on the third occasion there was a search committee even though the search committee members are close working subordinates of the President.
In any democratic country, he would have been pressed to resign by the Opposition. Mr. Jagdeo is always carping about my columns in the Kaieteur News and he had the opportunity to see the end of me as an analyst. I openly challenged him to prove me wrong on the third UG fiasco and I would have resigned from UG and stopped writing for the Kaieteur News. I would have kept my word. Is this a president that citizens should believe when he speaks about his intentions? The second methodology is the use of pyrotechnical and emotional rhetoric to denounce wrong-doing in the bureaucracy and the wider state sector but it ends up as a realpolitik game. It would seem that the Stabroek Business editor believes the things President Jagdeo said about the GRA probe. The writer quoted all the strong language from the President about the GRA investigation. But your writer failed to see that Mr. Jagdeo has a penchant for flair not substance. His flair goes on display when he is at his press conferences which is his turf.
How come after eight years as President, Mr. Jagdeo didn’t know about the “runnings” at the GRA when we in the media know who the key players are, the lavish life styles they live, the money they ship out and the assets they have. For example one of the relatives of one of the Customs officers who is a very young businessman has bought a mansion not far from where I live and the kitchen was imported from Italy. Guyana is too small for people with ostentatious spending habits not to be detected.
Secondly, Mr. Jagdeo is conceding that the PPP Government will fall after the probe is completed. Mr. Jagdeo said no one will be spared. Among those GRA personnel that have been sent home are people who are extremely close to the PPP and do immense favours for them, their relatives and their business associates. Three of the interdicted persons facilitate the clearance of goods with the imposition of minimal duties for two family owned companies that are extremely close to a really powerful person in the government. For this reason, the GRA probe is going to end up like the Nirmal Rekha masquerade.
The President sent Mr. Rekha on a year’s paid leave while the investigation went on into the duty free scam. In the end, three low level employees, two from Finance, one from Foreign Affairs were charged. The case jackets are on some dusty shelves. If the three persons are going to be put on trial, then they are not going to be convicted without naming others. It is “the others” that resulted in the case jackets being filed away.
I will cut out this letter and keep it on my working desk. When the 2011 elections come around, I will use it to ask East Indians not to vote for the PPP. I will produce it to show how the main perpetrators of a scam involving the creaming off of hundreds of millions of dollars of GRA money were protected by the very people who want us to re-elect them. I have no illusions that some very low level GRA officer will be charged. That person will be the fall guy in order to show the Guyanese people that there was indeed an inquiry. That inconsequential figure will be placed before the courts to protect the image of the Office of the President. Why weren’t independent people put on the investigation team? I believe Mr. Gino Persaud, the legal prosecutor of the GRA should have been involved in the probe. I know Mr. Persaud and can vouch for his integrity.
I have news for President Jagdeo. I would be willing to cease my column in the Kaieteur News if I can be put on the inquiry panel. I would like to. The corruption in the GRA operations is something the Guyanese people haven’t the faintest clue about. It is a sarcoma that is sucking the blood of this nation. The sums over the years are so prodigious that it makes this country perhaps the most corrupt in the world. The Guyana Government should ask the FBI and its Canadian equivalent to trace the stolen money.
Finally, Mr. Nascimento’s letter on the obligations of a broadcaster was well written. One cannot take umbrage to the enumerated points at all. But Mr. Nascimento omitted a crucial factor. It is this factor that makes the rule of the Guyana Government so offensive. Channels 11, 65 and 69 and the Chronicle are equally guilty of broadcasting and printing the most dangerously inciting materials. In many instances the words are those of the President. The President on three occasions has uttered perceptions of the Opposition that could have brought harm to the Opposition leadership. Certainly Mr. Sharma was wrong to rebroadcast the threat to the President. But if you have the person who has the law of punishment in his hands to administer and he too violates broadcasting ethics, then surely that is dictatorship since he can say whatever he feels like and not be liable to sanction. Mr. Burnham’s infamous 1980 Constitution is serving the PPP well. So what has changed since Burnham died?
Yours faithfully,
Frederick Kissoon
