Former PNC finance minister and economist Carl Greenidge says he is willing to pit his record in government against that of President Bharrat Jagdeo, who previously held the portfolio.
Greenidge’s challenge came in an interview with this newspaper on Monday and was in reaction to comments from Jagdeo at a recent news briefing, where he stated that the PNCR presidential aspirant had the worst record of all the finance ministers the country ever had, among other claims.
Jagdeo had also stated that then Auditor General Anand Goolsarran had been barred by Greenidge from auditing privatisation accounts and that there were no Auditor General reports during his stint as finance minister.
On Monday, Greenidge said the president’s view of him was “of no significance.” He added: “He doesn’t have to employ me and if I’m that bad then he should be happy for an opposition party to be led by somebody who’s incompetent; it would make him more comfortable. If I were he, I would sit quietly and allow them to do it.”
According to Greenidge, Jagdeo’s assessment of him or any other economist is “of no consequence.” The president, he said, should concern himself with the issues of accountability and corruption as was raised in the PNCR statement he read, which triggered the subsequent remarks from Jagdeo.
Greenidge, as one of five nominees to be the PNCR’s presidential candidate, had appeared at the party’s news briefing and read part of a press statement which dealt with the transparency of the government’s One Laptop Per Family project. “The opposition party says it has a problem with how he manages the resources of the country … and he immediately does one thing, he attacks the messenger. It wasn’t even my statement that I wrote, and then secondly he diverts into stories about 1992,” he said.
Greenidge stated that the reality is that Jagdeo has to deal with the present. He also disputed Jagdeo’s allegations about the Auditor General reports, saying they were “patently untrue.” He explained, “The Auditor General was written by me, saying that I was aware that he had written to the corporations …demanding from them certain documents and their lawyers advised them not to send it to him. The companies then wrote me and in response I wrote to Mr. Goolsarran instructing him to speak to the Attorney General before he wrote them again. In other words, go and get the advice because I’m not aware that Goolsarran is a lawyer,” he said. Greenidge added that it was interesting that the letter would be interpreted in the way the president did and “shows the extent to which not only is everything politicised but the extent to which people feel at liberty to manufacture events.”
Responding to the charge of a lack of audited accounts, Greenidge said when he became finance minister the accounts were years behind and when he left they had brought it closer to being up to date, with a schedule prepared for the completion of the accounts from 1985 to 1992. “That exercise involved both the Accountant General and Attorney General departments. I discovered subsequently that after our demission of office, the PPP stopped the exercise. So they stopped the exercise and then now are claiming it never did occur and that is proof of your failure to carry out your functions. That’s convenient but it’s untrue,” he said.
Greenidge added that the president also has to explain how with his accounts now going to the Public Accounts Committee and the body lamenting “many instances of abuse of the law,” nothing has happened in any of the cases. “That is the issue … and for the years when our (PNC) accounts were presented there were no similar excesses in terms of abuses of the regulations and laws, such as taking Lotto funds” and assigning them how he pleases, Greenidge said.
The president’s comments are an indication of what Greenidge is likely to face on the elections campaign trail should he secure his party’s nod to be the presidential candidate. He said he is undaunted by such a prospect. According to him, he has faith in the Guyanese people and he is prepared to match his record as finance minister against Jagdeo’s stewardship.
“Who cares about whether he thinks I was a good or bad finance minister? What we have seen, in 1990 you had negative growth; that was the first year of implementation of the ERP [Econo-mic Recovery Programme], trying to fix a problem. In 1991, you had growth of 6.5%, in 1992 you had growth of 7.5%, in 1993 and ’94 that trend continued.
“In 1995 it fell, in 1996 it rose but after that it fell and after 1997 it’s been downhill since. And post-1997 and especially post-2001, you have had Jagdeo either in the Ministry of Finance or in the presidency controlling the Ministry of Finance and those growth rates compare very unfavourably to those that resulted from and were associated with the ERP. It is growth that matters,” he stated.
Greenidge also said all of the international analyses of the ERP confirmed that it was working.
