Dear Editor:
President Ali’s promises of being results-oriented, and promises of transparency, efficiency, and accountability are very refreshing and inspiring. The PPP has come to power with enormous goodwill from people locally and from many people, countries and international organizations abroad. Everybody was cheerleading and rooting for the PPP. The whole world was arrayed against the PNC as it attempted to rig, and once GECOM made its declaration, Mr. Granger was unceremoniously gone quietly in the night, and only now surfacing to go place a wreath at his idol Burnham’s tomb.
To offer some words of advice to the PPP and President Ali, we have now entered an era of “vote them in, vote them out.” Do not take the people for granted; the people are sovereign. Your government has a one-seat majority and that is not cause for any triumphalism. All it takes for you to be voted out is for 5,000 people to be mad at you in 2025, and there are enough of these crossover voters to make that happen. The new parties have also won many hearts during the five-month impasse. So be humble; arrogance of Ministers and functionaries would not be tolerated and will undermine your foundations. Your Cabinet took oaths to be “public servants” not “public Lords” so we look forward to “servant leadership.” Be prepared to use the Kamla Persaud-Bissessar approach of replacing ministers if they are found to be corrupt or ineffective. One of the lessons of the March 2020 election is that the people will no longer tolerate dictatorship and kleptocracy by any party.
You should know that the people are paying careful attention to your words and looking to see if your actions match them. Not everyone who criticizes you is your enemy to be squashed; that person may be your best friend telling you the truth, warning you to mend your ways and to get back in line. Be nice to the people you see on your way up, it will be the same people you see on your way down (and they will laugh at you as you are coming down).
Guyana has always been well endowed with the most natural resources of any CARICOM country yet we remained poor not because of natural disasters, but because of, manmade disasters called “politicians.” It was not the shortage of resources that kept us poor, it was the corruption of our lying, cheating, stealing politicians. It is now time to stop this vicious circle of underdevelopment and it’s high time for all of our people to live the good life. All lives matter. We are impatient and will not stand idly by while greedy politicians and their friends think political office gives them a right to plunder state resources. With all the resources with which we have been blessed including our new-found oil, there is no reason any Guyanese should be poor.
So, Mr. President, if you are going to be “results oriented” set some targets for your Ministers and if they fail, replace them. You face a Local Government Election in two years. Mediocrity has no place in the cabinet. Our entire government is inefficient and not customer friendly. As bad as the Coronavirus, is a disease in the Guyana government called “come-back-titis.” For example, if you go from Berbice to GRA in Georgetown to get a driver’s licence, that’s not a same-day transaction. You have to spend more time and money to go back another day to collect it. This is the antithesis of efficiency. Put an end to these kinds of things that sap the energy of the people. This is the 21st century. We need quick responses from government, and need a new “customer service” orientation. Inefficiency is what fuels bribery to speed things up.
Mr. President, your promise of transparency is crucial especially in oil. Please release all oil related agreements. Please recruit more people trained in oil. You need a large team of technocrats to help our fresh, new Minister of Natural Resources. Jan Mangal, Melinda Janki, Charles Ramson, Annette Arjoon-Martins, Vincent Adams, Christopher Ram, Nigel Hinds, Evan Persaud, and others in the Diaspora must be recruited and included to help in this area where we are weak and being taken advantage of by a huge corporation. Your government will not be forgiven if it fails to renegotiate all contracts.
As important as oil is our education sector with the largest budget. There is no current education plan for the country. The web site is outdated. There is no way you can email anyone in the Ministry. I tried to send them some resource information on how to prepare for opening schools in the COVID environment but the website does not allow for that. I could not find any information on how the Ministry is addressing COVID-19 issues in education. So, who was minding the store there? The system, as is, fails more than half the students who do not pass their CXC exams. We cannot benchmark ourselves with the tiny Caribbean islands and delude ourselves that we are doing OK compared to CARICOM countries. Posing with 5 academically gifted students who passed 15+ subjects is not reflective of the success rate of all the students. So, Minister Manickchand has a lot of mess to clean up. This is a senior Minister with enormous experience, but she needs to surround herself with a strong technocratic team who are experienced education practitioners, who can help us transition to a 21st century system, redesigned to accelerate remote instruction in the COVID era. Many in the diaspora may be willing to assist her, but the government as a whole must not see diasporans as a large fundraising and lobbying farm, but must be willing to deliberately recruit, encourage and welcome meaningful diasporan involvement. A Ministry of Diasporan Affairs is not a bad idea.
Regarding accountability, the people are tired to see the Auditor General’s Reports and Public Accounts Committee reports indicating much wrong doing, but nobody is going to jail or being surcharged for malfeasance in office. Every dollar that is stolen steals medicines from our people, steals that road or bridge we have been waiting for all our lives to be built, steals that library that could be built for our children, and diminishes us all. We need a new accountability that swiftly dispenses justice to wrong doers. The people are tired of corruption, Mr. President.
Yours faithfully,
Dr. Jerry Jailall
