…at Sussex St
ack in the day there was a popular calypso, “Gi’e me de pill de Doctor order me!” But the other night, even when the Doctor from the House rushed to the (bottom) house warehouse, there wasn’t a pill in sight to be shown to the bevy of MP’s and the mob of reporters in tow! By now, we probably all know about the sordid and sleazy genealogy of the “Case of the Missing Pill”. But it bears repetition since its clear the truth is a bitter pill that the Government benches and the Speaker don’t want to swallow.
Let’s start with the fact that the brouhaha isn’t just about the fact that a sitting Minister sole sourced a “warehouse” for pharma that was just a “house”, but that he LIED about it to Parliament and was forced to apologise. In every other jurisdiction he would’ve been forced to resign. After all, just funding the purchase of a facility by a government campaign contributor and paying an exorbitant rental for months of non-existent services is tantamount to criminal fraud. But the Minister was allowed to get away with the slap on the wrist of the “public apology”. After all he said he’s “learnt a lesson”.
And this is what has to be asked now, “Exactly WHAT lesson did Dr Norton learn? That he can get away with murder once his PNC-led Government stands behind him? This Eyewitness wants to know why should there be recourse to the Hansard to find out whether MP Nandlall’s charge that four months AFTER the Minister’s apology, there still wasn’t “a pill” stored at the Sussex Street facility?
The Speaker and everyone in that National Assembly knows the context in which Nandlall’s charge was made. What the delegation that was sent over to Sussex Street was looking into was whether the space that the Government was shelling out big time Government money ($12.5 million/monthly ain’t Chicken feed!) was storing government pharmaceuticals. This was the very raison d’etre for the rental that was offered to the nation by no other than that paragon of public probity, Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo. That just the case there was a fire at the Government warehouse at Diamond, or a traffic jam on the East Bank Highway, DRUGS could be rushed from Sussex Street to Georgetown Hospital to save lives.
What was found? Condoms and lubricants? Was this “the pill” the doctor ordered? What MEDICAL emergency could possibly exist that would demand condoms and lubricant be available on call at the cost of millions and millions? Priapism? How widespread is this?
Or will we be now told since “condoms” help in birth control, it can be called “THE pill”??!!
…on Jubilee Park
It wasn’t only Dr Norton who didn’t learn the real lesson from “Pharmagate”. Another doctor in the House also seemed to be suffering from moral aporia – Dr Roopnaraine. What’s at issue on the revelations that he was a Director of the Homestretch Corporation that collected public funds isn’t that he pilfered those funds. He very well might or mightn’t have… and this will be revealed in the Inquiry the Government should launch.
No. What’s at issue is – as with Dr Norton – Public Infrastructure Minister David Patterson lied to the House when he omitted the name of Dr Roopnaraine as one of the Directors of the Company. And Roopnaraine, in remaining quiet and deferring to Paterson to offer the “explanation” was part and parcel of a conspiracy to mislead the House. And this should not be allowed to pass.
US President Nixon resigned not because he participated in the Watergate breaking. But, like Roopnaraine, he covered up his involvement in Homestretch.
The House should demand no less this time.
…on Budget
Resource Minister Raphael Trotman wasn’t very resourceful when he compared the Budget to “bitter medicine” Guyanese must drink “for their own good”.
Wasn’t that what Jim Jones told his flock about the Kool-Aid?
