Dear Editor,
I am writing in response to your article entitled: ‘Tackling crime, revamping education would be priorities – Granger tells business leaders,’ dated May 12.
It is my view that Mr. David Granger, et al have no economic programme outside of the neo-liberal free-market system. They will have to go begging the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank for loans, which will drive us into further poverty, worse than we see today under the current regime.
What surprises me is that Tacuma Ogunseye of the Working People’s Alliance has also implicitly endorsed Mr Granger. They also expressed sycophantic views about “Western democracies,” which openly support very repressive dictatorships in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, where they brutally murder people who protest against minority rule.
A certain section of the political elite in Guyana wants an end to the rule of the Jagdeo-Ramotar PPP, but Walter Rodney’s ideas and vision have been abandoned by yesterday’s radicals (Granger is a member of the African-Creole bourgeoisie, so no surprise). What frightens most of us is the inexperience of Mr Granger and his open support for the market economy. What is the difference between the economic policies that he intends to pursue if he gets into office and those of the current rulers? Is he willing to debate them? Is he a democrat, as he claims, when he walks around with the colour of the army?
I am firmly convinced that an alliance will be made between the Jagdeo-Ramotar PPP and the Corbin-Granger PNC, if neither of them gets a majority at the upcoming polls. In this regard, my workers-farmers alliance position is valid and the trade union and farmer organizations and all working people of Guyana will need to be ever vigilant. I remember these words from the Jamaican London-based poet, Linton Kwesi Johnson: “The poor and the dispossessed can’t get no rest.”
It is ironical that at this historical moment, when there is an opportunity to leave the discredited Burnham-Hoyte and Jagdeo-Ramotar-PPP legacies behind and stroll boldly forward along a new historical path, the progressive ideas and policies will be abandoned for a well-worn, long discredited Washington Consensus road of poverty and under-development. I expect Mr Granger’s economic advisers have all willingly digested the prevailing economic model. This was what they were following so eagerly in Egypt that caused the revolution there and the incarceration of Hosni Mubarak, the dictator. Guyana cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past. Our economic policies must be discussed openly with all our people. We need a bottom-up approach, not a top-down one, as Mr Granger and others are promoting. Leaders will rise up from below; make no mistake.
My criticisms of David Granger initially, focused on his knowledge of the rigging of elections in Guyana and the role of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) in the rigging processes. But I did raise, also, the issue of his support for the Washington Consensus policies, but he has not, until now, revealed his true colours. He has now told us about the main thrust of his proposed economic programme, which will be a disaster for the working people of our country.
When asked on Channel 9 television how he would he deal with labour relations issues in Guyana if he were to become the president, he said that he would refer the matter to his Minister of Labour. Mr Granger, like the current regime, treats the workers and working people with contempt. He seems to think, like others, that capital alone produces wealth, but he is totally misguided. Wealth is produced by workers and ordinary working people. We need a tri-sector economic approach to resolve our economic and social problems, where all of our people will be involved in the production process.
The problem with Mr Granger is we don’t know him and can’t trust him. Granger needs to know that privatization – selling off our national assets – is not the answer to our economic and social problems. In fact the capitalist-run government in the United Kingdom took over privately-owned banks that were going bankrupt. In other words, the taxpayers pay for the gross incompetence of the capitalists when they fail; it is never the other way around.
The capitalist can sack workers as they please, and the workers have no redress. Look at the situation in the bauxite industry and the threat to de-recognise the sugar workers union, GAWU.
So even under a capitalist-run government, we experience the taking over of privately-owned businesses when they no longer function. Burnham took over the privately-owned companies because the country’s economy was in a serious crisis. Had he taken over 50 per cent of the shares, we would not have found ourselves in a major crisis. The PPP fatally supported Burnham’s policies and state-owned properties came under the Kabaka’s (Burnham’s) personal dictate.
Mr Granger’s concern about the plight and marginalisation of the African-Guyanese poor must be taken seriously by all of us, but their living conditions will not be better off under the Washington Consensus policies that he wants to promote. In the fact the poor of all races will get poorer. There will be further starvation on the streets of Georgetown. This point was eloquently made by Mr Norris Witter during his speech at the last May Day rally to the annoyance of the PNC elements gazing in the front row seat at the rally. Mr Granger’s pronouncements to the private sector have raised the question again about capitalism versus socialism, and one must conclude that Guyana was never a socialist country under the PNC or the PPP.
Both administrations struggled for economic reforms that benefited the poorer section of our society at different levels. Why does Mr Granger think that by following a programme that favours big business or the business class he will be able to make fundamental changes in our country? Is he not deluding himself? We must stand up strongly against his policies.
The Jagdeo-Ramotar-PPP has been following a capitalist path of economic development, which was geared primarily to benefit their families and friends of the regime. Co-operatives that were supposed to be the driving force for the elimination of poverty in Guyana under the Burnham regime, had no place under this government.
Yours faithfully,
Mike Rahman
