Dear Editor,
Relative to your online news item, `Ramotar chides EU Ambassador’ (October 27), I truly feel embarrassed for Guyanese that former Guyana President Donald Ramotar, who clearly does not know how to read political tea leaves, hence his unceremonious and unorthodox exit from active politics, has stepped right into political cow dung in full public view.
EU Ambassador Jernej Videtic was merely reiterating the reason for the EU not releasing its taxpayers’ money late last year to a PPP/C government that had no respect for Guyanese, let alone regard for how it squandered their money. Yes, prorogation, which became effective November 2014, was one of the reasons Mr. Videtic noted, because it ushered in a period of no parliamentary oversight for how the EU’s monies for sugar would be spent.
And although Guyana was eligible for the 25M euros, as per agreement months before prorogation, the EU was actually aware since July 2014 of the pending no-confidence motion and vote in Parliament, which could have seen Parliament dissolved upon re-convening in November and new elections held within mere months. So, should the EU have gone ahead and given Guyana money under those uncertain political circumstances?
In fact, the EU was also aware that the reason for the no-confidence initiative, which triggered prorogation, was because the corrupt PPP/C regime disregarded Parliament’s voting down of line items in the 2014 Budget by illegally tapping into the Consolidated Fund and spending $4.5B on the very line items voted down. When the corrupt PPP/C government can disrespect the nation’s parliamentary oversight body like that and illegally spend money, why should the EU trust the PPP regime with fresh money?
Prior to all of this, we had none other than Komal Chand, President of the PPP union, GAWU, in June 2014, making a shocking demand for a full accounting of money given to the sugar industry before he could ever consider an offer of appointment to the GuySuCo Board of Directors (Stabroek News, June 19, 2014).
Mr. Chand who, on Sunday, ordered an industry-wide strike, said in June 2014 that if then President Ramotar was serious about overhauling the industry, a full financial disclosure on the company was necessary. He reportedly noted that over $31B was handed over by the EU for the industry to aid in its reform, and that while President Ramotar had declared the PPP regime gave more money to the industry than the EU’s contributions, he still wanted the President to disclose what the government gave and he would then ask the EU for a report showing how much it had released to date.
He then insisted that not all disbursements had been made and further opined that the management system was flawed, with the appointment of previous board chairman, Rajendra Singh as CEO, doing little to ease worries over the management structure of the state-owned corporation. In all fairness to Ambassador Videtic, I cannot recall Mr. Ramotar ever engaging Mr. Chand in a war of words over the latter’s embarrassing utterances, given that GAWU was a PPP union and GuySuCo was under the PPP’s control.
In 2013, then EU Ambassador, Robert Kopecky, sounded a strange warning about the PPP/C regime spending EU funds outside the specifically targeted sectors, and it was the first sign to Guyanese that the EU was actually monitoring what the PPP/C regime was doing with the money received. Some believe some of the money had gone to education, but what was revealing was the now known penchant for the PPP/C to shuffle around money intended for one area to another area, sometimes violating rules, regulations and even the law. The $27M taken in May from the GPL by two officials, for example, actually came from the PetroCaribe Fund set up for rice farmers. Who authorized that improper transfer? Then there was the failed attempt to transfer billions from the GGMC to the CHPA. Anyway, to be clear about the 25M euros that were supposed to be released before the end of 2014, Ambassador Kopecky clarified in January this year that the withholding was based on ‘eligibility criteria’ and ‘budget oversight’ issues (Stabroek News, January 23, 2015). Frankly, it was the EU’s money and it was the EU’s call to make whether or not to release it.
The same EU pumped US$145.9M into Guyana’s sugar industry between 2005 and 2013, and Guyana does not have to repay any of it.
As an aside, Guyana has an agreement with Norway for US$250M over 5 years to preserve our forests, but even though Guyana reportedly met the criteria to qualify for payments, some of the money has been ending up in a special account held by the IDB to be released as that agency sees fit. Where was the political noise from the PPP?
Let me close on yet another enormous political blunder by Mr. Ramotar when he took issue with the Ambassador’s statements that the EU was responsible for overseeing the disbursement of the monies which comes from its taxpayers. “Perhaps he (the EU Ambassador) needs to be reminded that much of the wealth accumulated by Europe was built on the backs of enslaved and bounded labour, and as a result of the worst crime ever committed against humanity, leading to the very justifiable recent calls for reparations.”
Those words came from a man whose party enabled certain political players in Guyana to acquire unspeakable wealth from raiding the public treasury, pimping out our state resources and assets and on the backs of underpaid and undermined Guy-anese, making it unbelievably horrific because it was done by Guyanese leaders. Mr. Ramotar just does not know how to read political tea leaves, which is why he is where he is today.
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
