Dear Editor,
The Alliance For Change is apparently in full damage control mode after being exposed on the nationally televised corruption debates. The party is now circulating what appears to be sympathy letters which begin:
“Dear friend, what is corruption? Corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. It means that decisions are taken for private interest instead of for public benefit.”
Guyanese are aware of the fact that the AFC leader Khemraj Ramjattan is a Member of Parliament and has also been employed (his own admission) by a private company which is seeking to win a bid to construct the Specialty Hospital in Guyana. As a Member of Parliament he was very vocal in the joint opposition efforts to use their one seat majority in refusing to fund the initial stage of the project.
In hindsight, we now know that Mr Ramjattan has a vested interest in this project which was further exposed when former Minister of Health Dr Leslie Ramsammy on national television during the public debates stated that he was constantly bombarded by calls/inquiries from Mr Ramjattan about the status of the company he represented getting the contract to build the hospital.
The onus is now on Mr Ramjattan to dispel the widespread perception that his initial efforts to withhold funding for the project at the level of the National Assembly were aimed at holding the nation’s continued development hostage if the National Tender Board did not award his company the bid to construct the hospital.
Mr Ramjattan needs to come clean and tell us as his party wrote in its ‘Dear John’ letter, if the decisions he took were for private interest instead of for public benefit.
Yours faithfully,
Romel Roopnarine