Dear Editor,
About two months ago, Dr Alain Kaloyeros, the president of SUNY Polytechnic Institute, the university neighbouring mine in upstate New York, resigned amid charges of corruption. Professor Kaloyeros is credited with transforming the school into an economic engine that lured big hitting nanotechnology firms to and created many high end jobs in the Albany area. However, Dr Kaloyeros is accused of having rigged the bidding process on a number of taxpayer-funded projects to reward his cronies, and earn kickbacks. My grad school colleague and I discussed the case, and I expressed sympathy for Dr Kaloyeros, pointing out that he did, after all, do a lot of good. I even pointed to a parallel back in my home country where many of my countrymen are willing to give public officials a pass on public malfeasance if it can be shown that they had done something to contribute to development. My colleague would have none of it, forcefully pointing out that economic growth and development is not mutually exclusive to transparency and good governance. Of course, I knew that, I told him, adding that while on paper that that may be true, that isn’t how things work out to be. My colleague landed the last punch, however, when he countered, that development would be faster without corruption and as such, the current reality should not restrain us from aspiring to the ideal.
In the weeks since our exchange, I have thought a lot about what I, and many of my compatriots, have come to expect as normal. As the debates around the National Budget for 2017 ‒ with its disastrous tax hikes and paucity of funding for job creating economic policies ‒ get underway in Parliament, online and in public spaces, there is arising a troubling nostalgia for the economic stewardship of the previous government. It is worthy to note that when David Granger won the presidency in May 2015, he became the first Afro-Guyanese to win the office in a free and fair election in an independent Guyana. He did so thanks not only to the high turnout of his base and the simultaneously low turnout of his rival’s, but a sliver of young, first-time and fed-up voters crossing traditional ethnic lines to protest what they saw as the nepotism, authoritarianism, and outright boorishness of the former administration, and hand Mr Granger a narrow victory and a chance to deliver meaningful change.
The members of the former administration have not left the political scene, they’re sitting on the opposite side of the aisle. Even though those charges of corruption levelled against them have sadly not been put to the judicial test, surely the memory of the Guyanese people is not so short as to forget the exorbitantly remunerated son of the former President who bungled an IT project, or the Trump-like utterances of a former Attorney General, or the politically connected contractor who made a mess of the road that leads to what would have been a hydroelectric facility, or the former Minister who threatened to slap a protester. The list goes on.
However, this government in its eighteen months in power, has hiked its ministers’ salaries; failed to promulgate a code of conduct; let one of its ministers get away with referring to child rape as “deflowering”; authorized huge allowances for travel by ministers and spouses; fought the taxpayer for a one-man pension; and worst of all, done nothing to come up with a development plan that would diversify the economy away from mining and farming, and create well-paying jobs for the struggling middle class. Altogether, Mr Granger’s government is taking all the missteps down that slippery slope to repeating the egregious conduct of its predecessors, while, in stark contrast to them, presiding over low growth. Small wonder then, people are frustrated to the point where they’d prefer a party that comes across as visionary and energetic when it comes to economic development, even if they pursue self-serving deal-making, to a self-described change-making coalition that has no clue how to get things growing. To contend that these are the only options, is to proffer the fallacy of the false choice. It does not have to be this way.
Mr Granger’s administration can opt to repeal or amend the most painful VAT proposals and set his government to work consulting with citizens on a comprehensive development policy that tackles the most binding constraints on our economic growth: credit constraints, high energy costs, lack of shipping infrastructure and other transportation links, crime, and a spectacular dearth of suitable and adequate human capital. With the National Development Strategy, Low Carbon Development Strategy, myriad feasibility studies for such things as an ethanol plant and other sector specific plans, all languishing as reading material in ministerial libraries after millions of dollars and untold hours would have gone into their conception, the administration does not want for a starting point.
If Mr Granger could deliver a safer and more economically well-off society during this term, he may very well earn himself another. More importantly, he will go down in history as the man who showed Guyana they can have a transparent, competent government that can justify its tenure on policy successes and not ethnic security. He owes it to the nation to do so. He has three and a half years left to get it done, meanwhile the clock keeps ticking.
Yours faithfully,
Saieed I Khalil
