At the conclusion of a parliamentary address in which he laid the troubles of the previous decade at the feet of the PPP/C, President David Granger yesterday voiced his hope for both sides of the National Assembly to find common ground but Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo cast doubt on his sincerity, while questioning what he has done to move the agenda forward.
Less than two hours after Granger delivered his third address to the National Assembly, which was boycotted by the PPP/C, Jagdeo characterised the president’s message as a “hostile” one.
At the end of his speech, Granger expressed the wish for the two sides in the House to find common ground in the pursuit of the common good. “The avenues for compromise and consensus remain open,” he said.
Asked for a response to the President’s seeming conciliatory tone, Jagdeo later told a press conference that they have heard this before and he described it as almost an afterthought.
“You know, ‘you are all criminals, you left us a bad economy, your environmental policy was terrible…’ then he repeats all of what he believes are original ideas… and then says I think there is room for us to work,” Jagdeo said, while adding that the Head of State would have said this several times.
He described it as “rhetoric” and asked if the president has done anything significant to move this agenda forward.
“He has this Social Cohesion Ministry that is more partisan than anything else with [Minister] Amna Ally. Amna Ally is a partisan person, she can’t bring people together; in fact they are using it as a slush fund, that ministry, for people to travel and do party work…,” Jagdeo said.
During his speech, Granger said his government will work towards creating a cohesive society that will see confrontation replaced by cooperation. He also spent significant time talking about the wrongs under the PPP/C administration, while stating that the “most unforgettable experiences and most frightening evidence of our descent into chaos were the bloody, drug-driven, decade-long ‘troubles.’”
“The ‘troubles’ will be remembered as the darkest hour in our history. It was a time of the un-investigated assassination of a minister; of the investigation into the alleged implication of another minister in the direction of a ‘death squad;’ of the alleged implication of yet another minister in the acquisition of a computer to track the telephone communication and location of adversaries targeted for assassination,” Granger said.
However, Jagdeo, who described the president as aloof and out of touch, pointed out that the government has been in office for a year and a half “and you get this sort of speech from the president.”
“It was desecration of the chambers today, the President desecrated the National Assembly chambers,” he told a press conference in the Committee Room of the Public Buildings.
The opposition on Wednesday said it would boycott the speech following the President’s announcement that he had suspended Carvil Duncan from the chairmanship of the Public Service Commission and other constitutional bodies. Duncan is facing a theft charge in the courts and he is being investigated by a tribunal set up by the president to determine whether he is still fit to chair the Public Service Commission
Proverbial straw
Jagdeo yesterday said that the suspension was the “proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.”
“But maybe it was right that we did this (boycott the speech) because had he made that sort of speech when we were sitting there, we would have opted to walk on him, even if we were there because it runs counter to everything they have spoken about in the past,” Jagdeo said.
He described the President’s speech as one a person makes shortly after they would have been voted into office. “You criticize the former government, you talk about your difficulties… you cast blame on everyone and then you give some broad guidelines about how your government will operate,” he said.
He said Granger should have blamed the drug dealers and insurgents known as the “freedom fighters” for the “troubles” that he alluded to. He noted that the latter group was operating with impunity in Buxton during that time and killing members of the security forces randomly as well as ordinary citizens. Such killings, according to him, were not condemned by the opposition PNCR at the time. The PNCR is now the major constituent of the APNU part of the ruling coalition.
Jagdeo denied that the assassination of Minister Satyadeow Sawh was uninvestigated as he pointed out that someone was charged with the murder.
Granger also characterised the period of ‘troubles’ as one for arbitrary arrests, disappearances and the torture of young men as well as the surge in armed robberies, narco-trafficking and gun running. “During that first, deadly decade, there were 1,316 murders and 7,865 armed robberies,” he said.
But Jagdeo pointed out that many of those murdered were policemen and that the then opposition never condemned it.
In response to the president’s statement that the “grisly security situation was accompanied by a parlous economic situation,” Jagdeo questioned the claim, while adding that the PPP/C had governed over an improved economic situation and one that constantly grew.
“So it is not true, it is not true, in fact there has been a massive improvement in the economy…our inflation rate was single digit. They did not inherit a parlous economy; in fact it was a growth economy. It has now become an economy on the decline, so you can tell how out of touch the president is,” he said.
President Granger also spoke about what he described as cronyism that led to serious, costly serial scandals.
“The undermining of public infrastructure by the encouragement of cronyism led to serious, costly, serial scandals as seen in the construction of the Kato Secondary School; the Hope Canal bridge; the river-front revetment at Kumaka, Barabina road and Moruca bridge; Supenaam stelling and the still unusable Ministry of Social Protection building in Georgetown,” he said,
While Jagdeo conceded that some of the listed projects had difficulties, he said that there was an open public tender for the award of the projects, with an evaluation done by the technical staff and recommended by technical people to the Cabinet for no objection.
Further, Granger said that the PPP/C’s environmental policy will be remembered but not fondly due to the administration’s responsibility for the most destructive environmental disaster in Guyana’s history—the “catastrophic 2005 flood.” “This was an event of incalculable damage, disease, discomfort and, in some cases death,” he said.
“This man is now blaming us for the floods in 2005…it is like blaming the people in The Bahamas and Haiti for causing the hurricane…,” Jagdeo responded, while adding that despite not getting much international help, the then government made sure people had food and they were moved to shelters. His government, he said, responded to the flood better than many countries do to natural disaster.
