Why would a newly elected Government coming in a wave of goodwill and with campaign promises of positive change, set about, and deliberately so it seems, to destroy it all?
Since coming to office last May, the Ganger Government has done nothing but upset and enrage the general population with their actions and policies. They have upset sugar workers, rice farmers, trade unionists, public servants, the Guyana Bar Association, Red Thread, the GHRA, the Guyana Hindu Dharmic Sabha, and TIGI.
They have taken away utility subventions from the elderly and created none of the promised jobs for our youth nor included them as significant participants in the new government.
Communities Minister Ronald Bulkan insists he has done nothing illegal by awarding the mayoral and chairmanship positions to only Coalition winners in constituencies where there were ties with the PPP/C. Legality aside, this was a prime opportunity for Government, who were so highly critical while in the Opposition, to act fairly. But this was beyond them so the PPP/C rightly took the matter to court.
In handing down the writs to stay his hand, Justice Diana Insanally said that Bulkan’s decision was “made in bad faith, is unreasonable, arbitrary, capricious, … malicious, vindictive, unlawful …”
Justice Insanally’s words could be applied to just about every decision taken by Government to date. Trade union leader Lincoln Lewis in a recent letter to the press stated: “There are reports of state and government officials acting as a law unto themselves with little or no regard for tenets of good governance that ought to be guiding their conduct.”
In a recent column in Stabroek News, economist Tarron Kemraj disclosed that the forensic audits done by Government into the PPP/C Government’s finances “found little evidence of widespread government theft ….” He added that a redistribution of state resources amounted to “nepotism and bad governance” and that these and other irregularities fed the perception that the previous Government was corrupt.
The imbroglio over the relationship of Minister of State Joe Harmon with businessman Brian Tiwari and Chinese logging company BaiShanLin drew fire from Transparency International Guyana Inc which stated that the Minister “is confirming that the government has been using its position to employ and reward, out of state resources, its supporters and donors.”
Harmon’s prepared statement defending his conduct dispels none of the perceptions of governmental excess and wrongdoing and smacks more of a cover-up.
Nigel Hughes has deferred his resignation as AFC Chairman which came on the heels of a party statement calling for a curb of Harmon’s powers. In resigning, Hughes said that the chairmanship had become “untenable”.
Added to the troubles within the AFC camp are rumours of internal PNC/APNU squabbles over the allocation of the post elections spoils.
President David Granger’s reputation as a strongman could well be tested as he tries to hold everything together especially since his Government has lost the Indo-Guyanese support which the AFC brought to the Coalition. The results of the recent Local Government Elections confirm that the 11% Indo-Guyanese vote that gave the Coalition its slim lead in the general elections have mostly returned to the PPP/C.
This will probably be written as the biggest tragedy in the Coalition’s legacy. That Indo-Guyanese were willing to take that chance and vote for a Government led by the PNC/APNU, knowing full well their Burnhamist past, was a notable move away from Guyana’s race politics.
However, the Granger Government never set about to nurture that new support which would have encouraged more Indo-Guyanese to join them. In fact, they proceeded to do quite the opposite and Granger’s total disregard for the Cummingsburg Accord made it clear that the AFC was simply used for its Indo-Guyanese constituency in order to get them a victory.
With that support gone, the Coalition Government is nothing but a sham. By all accounts, Guyana is now being governed by a minority Government with the PNC/APNU retaining only their hard-core supporters which would put them at much less than 40% of the electorate.
Thus far, the Granger Government seems more intent on exacting vengeance against the PPP/C and its supporters rather than pursuing positive policies for Guyana’s progress.
The country is skittering from one scandal to the next, from one crisis to the next and every bit of goodwill has been squandered. Peace and prosperity always go together and there will be no progress while the country is in a constant state of uproar.
To paraphrase the poet WB Yeats’ famous lines: Can the centre hold when everything is falling apart?
