As inauguration addresses go, President Ali’s own on Saturday hit the key notes. That was the easy part. The challenge now is to live up to the commitments.
The urgent tasks at this point are the containment of COVID-19 and the rolling out of relief to households and small businesses that have been hammered by the months of lockdown. While lockdowns have been well employed in other jurisdictions to contain the pandemic, the global experience has highlighted two pitfalls. Where lockdowns are ineffectually employed the number of infections and deaths continue to rise even as economic activity dissipates and the underprivileged in particular encounter oppressive circumstances. Second, a lockdown will not protect from a secondary wave of infections if the guard is let down. Guyana has suffered the first of these pitfalls and is eminently vulnerable to the second. The lockdown was not enforced in key parts of the country with the result that there are clusters of cases which pose a threat. Whether the new government is up to the task and has been intently following the situation from the sidelines will be soon seen. Affected hinterland communities have to be properly sealed off without interruption of the vital supply chains. We await details from the new team that has been put together by President Ali on matters such as contact tracing, expanded testing and ensuring adequacy of isolation facilities.
The new President alighted upon the onslaught that households have faced from the pandemic as a result of a loss of earnings. He announced that $4.5b is being earmarked to address this. Without a budget for 2020 it is unclear where these funds would be allocated from. The vital matter here however is how the government will determine which households are to be assisted and in what manner. As in every such endeavour the government must ensure that its decision-making is transparent and can withstand scrutiny.
Aside from COVID-19, the sugar industry remains in strife and over 7,000 families were left in impecunious circumstances when the former administration callously ended their employment without offering viable alternatives. While as the presidential candidate for his party, Mr Ali promised to reopen three of the four shuttered estates. The public will wait to see how he navigates this gargantuan promise. It wasn’t easy to decipher from his address on Saturday just what his plans are for sugar as he spoke in general terms.
He stated: “Once proud men who worked in the sugar industry from sun-up to sun down, never complaining about the back-breaking nature of their jobs, are today barely scratching a living.
“Their anguish is not only that they can’t earn a decent wage; it is that they cannot feed their families. Hunger and malnutrition abound. These conditions do not reflect the Guyana in which we were raised; this is not the Guyana we know. And, it is certainly not a Guyana we should allow to continue. The sugar industry has virtually been abandoned in the past five years, and the workers have been deserted. No attempt has been made to seek a new path by which aspects of the industry could be salvaged for the production of profitable sugar-based niche products, that would maintain jobs, and by doing so maintain the dignity of labour.
“While we are still putting together the torn fragments, the picture of the industry appears deeply distressing. The assets of GuySuCo seem to have been stripped by NICIL …and disposed of in a criminal manner. The once greatest contributor to our nation’s economy, has been beaten down to its knees, and the workers tossed to a heap of unemployment and misery. We intend to raise up the industry and to help it, and its workers resume the once proud place in our economy”.
While he also spoke about creating employment, Mr Ali’s address was silent on one of the PPP/C’s flagship commitments – the creation of 50,000 jobs over five years. This will be of great significance to the populace given the high unemployment and underemployment rate in the 18 to 35 years cohort. President Ali’s government must make this particular promise easy to track. It is one that he and his government will be judged by.
On the oil and gas industry, given the prominence it has commanded in the economy since 2015, President Ali had very little to say outside of a pledge to ensure transparency in the spending of oil revenues.
He stated: “We will also establish a Petroleum Commission to ensure that the oil and gas sector is not subjected to undue political interference.
“More importantly, we will ensure that every cent of the revenues from the sector is accounted for, as well as every cent of it that is spent.
“There must be no doubt in the minds of our people that our country, our nation, our people are the beneficiaries of the oil and gas industry”.
There are numerous serious issues in the oil industry which must be immediately confronted and President Ali would be well aware of these. They include vastly improving the terms of the reprehensible 2016 Production Sharing Agreement with ExxonMobil’s subsidiary, expanding the capacity of key regulators such as the Environmental Protection Agency and creating independent oversight within the Natural Resource Fund which is still to be operationalised.
It cannot be emphasised enough that President Ali and his ministers must be fully accountable to the public for their conduct and there can be no attempts to cover up corrupt and injudicious behaviour by senior functionaries. While not perfect and not adequately enforced, the previous government had developed a code of conduct for senior government officials. President Ali should consider enhancing this code of conduct and ensure that it is fully applied to his administration. The Integrity Commission must be swiftly reactivated and adequately resourced. The fate of this Commission will be the clearest sign of whether the PPP/C government intends to honour commitments for its leading officials to be transparent and accountable.
Finally, it is worth pointing out that although it won the elections in a fair process, the PPP/C could not secure office for five months. It took a broad coalition of local interests – in particular a rising band of courageous souls in the small parties – and the international community to bring sustained pressure to enable it to accede to office. The PPP/C should be humbled by this and should ensure that its governance is shorn of arrogance and abuse of power.
