The announcement that one of the biggest and most profitable private companies in Guyana was granted a waiver of approximately billion in excise taxes, owed between 2002 and 2006, further confirms that Guyana is now being governed (dictated) by a few for a few. The resources and benefits of our country are controlled by a few and are entitlements for a few only. This is the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change’s (APNU/AFC) jubilee anniversary gift to Guyana.
The select few who made significant donations to APNU/AFC during the election of 2015 now greedily demand their rewards for their investments. According to the Governance Czar of APNU/AFC, Raphael Trotman, it is normal for political donors to be bountifully rewarded with contracts and jobs. The powerhouse Minister of State, deems the rewards that benefit the few, but leave out the vast majority who did the voting as ‘honorific’. The voters are pawns in this “game of governance by the few for the few”.
The few who benefits from Government largess are appointed as advisors and use this official title to get special privileges from other investors who see them as having special relations with powerful Government officials. They parlay their special titles to buy influence and get richer, while the majority of the people, the voters and their families, are treated like suckers.
While these advisors get richer and more powerful in the halls of power, the majority of the Guyanese people have nothing to look forward to. More than 100,000 families who benefited from the ,000 per child “Because We Care” education grants before 2015 were denied the grants in 2015 and 2016 because the few in the APNU/AFC told the vast majority of people that the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) left the treasury bankrupt. The few fibbed (a nicer way of saying they lied) in order to deny the many of their legitimate expectations. Yet Demerara Distillers Limited (DDL) benefited from an amount that could have given 100,000 families the grant for three years.
In 2015, based on APNU/AFC’s fictitious claim that the treasury was bankrupt, the promised 20 per cent pay increase for the more than 20,000 public servants was denied, but the few in the APNU/AFC Cabinet promptly turned around and gave themselves an unprecedented pay and benefits increase which has no precedent in history anywhere. In 2016, the public servants were again denied any meaningful pay increase. The public servants and the rest of the citizens must feel comforted that “their Government officials were adorned by richness suiting their position as the new emperors”. Nagamootoo insists the public servants time will come later.
More than 20,000 sugar workers for the first time in more than 40 years did not get a pay increase. Without any notice, the Wales Sugar Estate was closed, affecting not only 2000 workers and their families, but blighting the economy for almost 100,000 people who live in Region Three. Now the workers and their families at La Bonne Intention (LBI) have been informed that the LBI Sugar Estate will also be closed. Suddenly, people are realising that the veiled threat made before 2015 by the few who now control the Government was real – the sugar industry is on the verge of being closed. Meanwhile, ten thousand rice farmers and families, collectively the largest investors in Guyana’s economy, billion annually, are told by the few that they are not part of the business of Government.
The people were promised that VAT would be reduced, but, instead, the few in Government increased 140 different taxes affecting ordinary citizens. According to the few, while it is wise to give a big, filthy rich organisation like DDL a waiver of billion, it is perfectly sensible to ask ordinary citizens to pay up more. What kind of ethics dictate that it is the right to increases taxes for the donkey cart owner, while waiving taxes owed by big corporations? But this is exactly how the few govern for the few.
The few incidentally includes the 34 advisors appointed on the basis of patronage, simply because these persons supported APNU/AFC financially. If who these persons are only known by APNU/AFC, then that is how the few govern for the few – a few who wield power and a few who benefit. The vast majority of people, however, are the ones who pay for the extravagance and power drunkenness. This is the real change of May 2015 – substituting a Government that govern for the people with a governance by the few for the few, where the people cherish their donkey carts while in awe of the fancy porches of the few.
