Dear Editor,
In response to your February 23 news item, ‘Cabinet shake-up looms,’ with the strap line ‘- to shoo-in Ramotar as PPP candidate,’ let me say that, assuming this revelation from your inside source holds some element of truth, I am utterly disgusted with the PPP, which continues to think that it can simply foist any one of its so-called leaders on the nation, as if there is some sense of political entitlement for such party leaders to run the country.
My disgust is premised primarily on the fact that after Dr Cheddi Jagan died, we witnessed a convoluted arrangement, in which his wife became President following the general election of 1997.
Some way into her term PM Sam Hinds stepped down, and Mr Bharrat Jagdeo became Prime Minister, following which Mrs Jagan resigned, Jagdeo automatically became President and Hinds was re-appointed Prime Minister. While all this shuffling was taking place, Guyanese heard nothing from any one of these presidents about how they intended to address the urgent needs of the country, and now 17 years after the PPP returned to power it is no surprise that the number one concern among the people of Guyana remains the economy. I am saying to the PPP and its government the same thing someone said to a political opponent in the United States, “It’s about the economy, stupid!”
Maybe the PPP still enjoys quiet support among many in its constituency, but despite taking advantage of its larger ethnic voter base to win all the presidential elections since 1992, the PPP and/or its government have not delivered to the people who matter most: the ordinary working folks whom the PPP boasts it is representative of. Except for the LCDS, which was a figment of the President’s imagination, the PPP has not produced a comprehensive blueprint for socio-economic development, but it is getting ready to pick another candidate whose vision for the country is not even known. Even if the PPP and other observers are right that the PPP will win again in 2011, is selecting Mr Donald Ramotar as its next presidential candidate the best the party could do? Is the candidacy really about seniority in the party, so that all the old loyalists will get their turn, providing they toe the party line?
He said he wants to be President, which, on its face, seems more like a political entitlement, but as the General Secretary of the PPP and a PPP MP, what has Mr Ramotar accomplished in Parliament or helped the party do for Guyana in the last 17 years, so that the people can blithely ignore the secretive process of his selection? Is this not the same man who sat on the GuySuCo board in 2008, the year the sugar industry suffered a $3B loss for various reasons, including several instances of strike action called by the PPP union, GAWU, and because that year the Chinese were held partly responsible for screwing up completion of the Skeldon Plant?
It did strike me as odd when the President took Mr Ramotar on his last Middle East trip, because it was obvious to most political observers that the President has been operating from his own playbook as opposed to that of the party.
It was only after they returned from that trip and government moved to have Parliament pass a supplemental 2009 budget in January 2010 seeking $4 billion to buy land from GuySuCo for housing development that it dawned on me that this deal had the fingerprints of both the PPP and the government. Conventional reasoning says while the secondary objective was to make up for the $3B loss GuySuCo suffered, the primary objective was to ensure the corporation will have money to pay sugar workers, who then won’t need to go on strike for better wages or bonuses, especially given that elections are due next year and the PPP will need the votes of sugar workers.
In other words, it now seems plausible that the PPP and its government could be using taxpayers’ money to ensure sugar workers will stop publicly displaying their dissatisfaction or rage at the government through industrial strike action and go ahead and vote PPP in 2011. But then one has a right to wonder what role, if any, Mr Ramotar played while sitting on the Interim GuySuCo board and heading up the party that controlled GAWU, in exerting pressure on the government. If, by virtue of any role he played, Mr Ramotar ended up being selected as the next candidate, what does it say of him as a responsible leader, when Guysuco lost that much money while he sat on its board? And he wasn’t even the one who reported the problems in GuySuCo 2008. The AFC’s Khemraj Ramjattan was the one who visited Skeldon and reported the problems there, which were at first vehemently denied by industry and government officials, before an acknowledgement was made followed by an official investigation.
What does it also say about the PPP and its government that taxpayers have had to fund this $4B GuySuCo ‘bailout’ after the government committed itself to ensuring that Clico (Guyana) policyholders would not lose out following the company’s US$34M loss last year. Should this become necessary, it too would require taxpayers’ money.
There have been lots of instances, as reported by the private media, where billions of dollars in public money went to waste in the last ten years, and so there is a definite need for a forensic audit of this government’s books to determine what happened to billions of dollars that even the Auditor-General raised red flags over.
Anyway, in one news article, Mr Ramotar did admit that there was some amount of corruption in government, but his acknowledgement did not amount to a ringing endorsement of a full-scale investigation into what we know to be systemic corruption in government. Besides, where was Mr Ramotar’s voice when the calls were being made for an investigation into the pre and post-Mash Day 2002 criminal stampede that left over 200 Guyanese dead, among them possibly innocent people who had nothing to do with the stampede itself? Where was Mr Ramotar’s voice when Roger Khan copped a plea deal from US prosecutors for running a major drug smuggling operation in Georgetown and the Robert Simels trial in New York unearthed damaging testimony linking government officials to drug smugglers and criminal elements in Guyana? And given that he wants to occupy the Office of the President, where was his voice when stories came out of impropriety taking place in that same office? How could his selective silence not open him to the allegation that he is a man who could turn a Nelson’s eye to wrongdoing in government?
All of that explains why it won’t be right for the PPP to simply foist Mr Ramotar on the nation (assuming Guyanese forget their government-induced pains and vote race again in 2011) without having him tell the nation where he intends to lead it over the five years he plans to run the country, because in 1999 the PPP foisted Mr Jagdeo on the nation as President without having him share his vision of where he intends to lead Guyana, and look where we ended up. And if Stabroek News’ reportage is true that Mr. Ramotar will take over the Local Government Ministry, thus allowing him to travel around the country so he can become known to the people, then this is definitely repulsive and repugnant! Why should taxpayers be responsible again for the PPP’s indiscretions by paying for Mr Ramotar’s travelling expenses doing the work of the Local Government Minister so he can make his name and face known as a presidential candidate?
Finally, it has to dawn on Mr Ramotar that the Local Government Ministry, as a limb of the executive branch, was supposed to help uphold the constitution by ensuring Local Government elections are held on due dates, but for almost 15 of the 17 years the PPP has been in power, the people were denied the right to vote, thus making the PPP as guilty as the PNC it constantly accused of denying the people free and fair elections from 1968 until 1992. I don’t know if Mr Ramotar’s new portfolio as Local Government Minister will help the PPP secure wins in pending local elections, but if the people of Guyana take a close look at the PPP’s track record for the last 17 years and give that party the nod at the local and national elections, then they truly deserve the government they get.
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin