Anna
Correia
By now most Guyanese have realised that the coalition Government not only lacks experience in running the affairs of the country, but also, that it has no intention of respecting its promises of transparency and accountability. If Guyana is on the list of most corrupt countries in the world, this is not likely to change anytime soon.
It appears that protecting party comrades who have erred is a well-entrenched habit across polities. And so, political tyrants and men who have filled their pockets shamelessly at the expense of Guyanese taxpayers are allowed to operate freely. No sanctions or replacements are envisaged for people like Health Minister George Norton who is at the source of the massive Sussex Street bond scandal, or Region Nine REO Carl Parker who is still the object of a petition by more than a thousand Amerindians requesting his removal on the basis of political and ethnic discrimination.
As it is with all governments, this one tries desperately to divert attention from the real issues affecting Guyana’s development, with its latest distraction being a Coconut Festival launched to promote a sector which would save the economy from the wreck of the rice and sugar industries.
Only in the imagination of the APNU and AFC.
Of course, this isn’t enough to camouflage the explosive crime and unemployment rates which entomb Georgetown, mercilessly flooring all sectors. With the laying-off of 500 employees, Barama is perhaps the first company in the private sector to provide quantitative proof of the state of the economy, impacted by destructive reforms and poor policy making resulting from the Government’s irresponsibility and incompetence. In light of the catastrophic state of the economy, one is forced to question the very purpose of the Business Ministry, if it isn’t to create “jobs for the boys” in Moses Nagamootoo’s “donkey cart economy”.
But unlike the former administration, the coalition is much better at pretending. And so it pretends it is actually concerned about determining the truth behind the corruption of its own that are caught red handed abusing Guyana’s taxpayers. As a result, it has become the Government of CoIs (Commissions of Inquiry) and investigations which to date, besides wasting financial resources, have served this country in no productive way. A good example is the GuySuCo CoI. Helpless cane harvesters in their patched-up shirts looked on as Cabinet approved a whopping $52 million in salaries and benefits for consultants alone, for a period of 90 days spanning July to September 2015.
The worse part? The recommendations of the CoI were never adopted by the Government which later announced that cane harvesters were the highest paid public servants; that there would be no wage increase in 2015; and that the closure of the Wales Estate was non-negotiable.
Now, all eyes are on President Granger to see if he will order another useless CoI, this time into the financial mismanagement of the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples Affairs. Despite the appointment of two Ministers, a swarm of advisors, a Permanent Secretary and a Deputy Permanent Secretary, $818 million cannot be accounted for from the Amerindian Purpose Fund (APF), under Sydney Allicock’s watch. It was just a matter of time before this facet of the Ministry’s incompetence manifested itself, shedding light on the extravagances in which indulge the Ministers and their senior officials.
The leaders of this Ministry, much like their colleagues in other Government agencies, still act as though they’re campaigning for votes, therefore explaining their penchant for handouts as opposed to sustainable policy-making.
Unfortunately, millions worth of shady handouts are to be elucidated. Surely, the now jobless cane harvesters in Berbice and on West Bank Demerara are curious to know where their taxes, earned from the sweat of their brows and the blisters of their palms, went.
This is the same APNU/AFC Government which in a column published February 26, 2015 in a popular daily, accused the PPP of “shady deals, financial impropriety, and immoral conduct” and pledged that it would “dismantle the corrupt institution which has hijacked Guyana, usurped our laws, overtaken our economy and impoverished our citizens”.
In the said column one can read that the “APNU-AFC partnership will tackle corruption from its roots, all the way to the top of the government”.
We are still waiting. (Send comments to [email protected])
