Dear Editor,
So, Aubrey Norton, who aspires to lead Guyana as President, wants the Irfaan Ali-led PPP/C administration to abandon its national agenda. Norton wants the government to halt its build-out of the traditional sectors which the Granger administration utterly degutted and tragically ruined. He wants the PPP/C government to ignore the economically sustainable convention of using the bulk of early oil revenues to build a multi-dimensional economy, robust enough to sustainably improve the livelihoods of all Guyanese. His economic alternative calls for the government to pause the building of new highways that are opening land for new businesses that will create good-paying jobs across the country.
He wants the government to not bother with building a new four-lane bridge across the Demerara River that will ease the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Guyanese and expand economic development and opportunities beyond George-town. Norton wants President Ali to not prioritize a fully rehabilitated highway for the people of Linden, nor the Pan-American Highway to South America that will potentially transform that town into a thriving city. He thinks Lindeners do not deserve an Industrial Estate nor one thousand turn-key homes within the first term of the government, or the hundreds of millions in road rehabilitations currently underway. He would rather the residents of South Georgetown, Belladrom, Buxton and New Amsterdam remain underemployed, unempowered and hopelessly deprived of clean, green recreational spaces and facilities, improved infrastructure, and economic opportunities.
Aubrey Norton could care less about the thousands of Amerindians whom Granger rendered unemployed and penniless, and for sure, he would rather see the thousands of sugar workers who were sent packing into nothingness remain there, wither away with their families, and die. The vacuous mind that is Guyana’s shadow Opposition Leader conveniently refuses to see anything or anyone beyond the welfare of public servants whom his party hypocritically, shamelessly, and falsely claims as its own and claim they were empowering. It is an ask of virtual impossibility, for Norton to begin to comprehend the very basics of how a country that wants to leapfrog from the outer bands of perpetual poverty to the upper echelons of wealth for all its citizens, must prudently and strategically manage its development agenda to achieve constant, exponential, and sustainable growth for both its people and its sector webs, concomitantly.
Surely, if Guyana were to heed the advice or contemplate the little-league leadership of Aubrey Norton and his advisors, this country would most assuredly fall prey and dinner to not only the Dutch disease but also the PNC’s rice flour and breadfruit scorn all over again. The hopes of its citizens to benefit from free university education by 2025 would be dashed against the exorbitant fees the APNU+AFC introduced and planned to keep increasing; the government would spend sixty billion of oil revenue in one-off payments of $300,000 to each household annually and condemn them to continue suffering in blackouts, falling waist deep into potholes, receiving only a chest sounding and a prescription at every hospital and clinic, drinking coliform from their taps, and receiving education on slates under the flickers of flambeaus.
Because he would see no merit in bringing gas to shore and building hydroelectric plants to halve people’s electricity bill; no refinery; no new hospitals or water treatment plants or modern smart schools; no modern sports facilities or new city for that matter; and he certainly would give no cash grants to our children. Our sea defenses would crumble, our water conservancies would continue washing out the farmers, our loggers and miners would keep paying taxes to use bad roads, our Amerindian brothers and sisters would get no titles to their lands or funds for their development, and our youths would have no forum, resources nor hope to contribute to decision making. According to his short-sightedness, all the myriad cost-of-living cushioning given to every sector and citizen to weather the storm of the global meltdown over the past two years would have been left to the magic and economic gymnastics of his one-off $300,000 to each household, full-stop.
Then according to my grandmother, everything else ‘wudda suck salt.’ My fellow Guyanese, look around for yourself, reason logically, or better yet, ‘talk de ting straight up’… Does the all-rounded, careful approach by President Ali to national development and transformation, where everyone and every sector grow together at an even pace make sense to you; or Aubrey Norton’s plan to share out all the oil money at $300,000 a household, then be able to do nothing else for the country’s sustainable development, nada? I have every confidence in the intellectual ability of every Guyanese to easily reason this out, whether from an academic or a street-smart point of view, to see an 8% retroactive increase for public servants along with adjustments to all categories of salary scales to be announced in the coming days, and all the other support programs already enacted and with more to come, as prudent fiscal management.
Add the reduction in mortgage rates for new home construction to that; add the removal of VAT from almost every food and household item to that; add the removal of excise tax from gasoline to that; add the regular support to those with disabilities and those on dialysis to that; add the home construction management and materials assistance programme to that; then ask yourself what in the world is Aubrey Norton really grandstanding about. My Guyanese brothers and sisters in the public service, my brothers, and sisters in the rice fields, those in the cane fields, those in the mines, those of you in the interior, and those of you who can see through and through Norton’s useless diatribes; I trust that you would think for yourselves, choose for yourselves, and determine which is the smarter path to your Guyanese future of wealth and empowerment.
Sincerely,
Kwame McCoy
Minister within the Office of the
Prime Minister