Thirty months into its term, APNU/AFC has totally shed its disguise, openly flaunting its dictatorial credentials. APNU/AFC has become so emboldened that it is flaunting its roots — its DNA — as a ruthless, authoritarian, dictatorial force. It is on a mission to outdo its parent political party, the People’s National Congress.
More and more, David Granger’s Cabinet is working overtime to ensure that he outperforms his hero Forbes Burnham as a Guyanese dictator. Clearly, the bold, arrogant, authoritarian swag of APNU/AFC is derived from something — it is based on the increasing confidence that it can rig the next election.
The Guyanese people must unite to stop this already well-entrenched authoritarian train.
Four incidents in the last week underline this frightening trend. One: Minister Harmon insisting that contracts like the oil contract were kept a secret, and not released or discussed in public because the Government feared the Guyanese people would suffer from information overload. This is not just an absurd, horrendous excuse for the heavy dose of secrecy, non-transparency and non-accountability; it is an insult to the Guyanese people. He even declared that APNU/AFC is doing the people a favour by not providing information about oil and other contracts. This arrogance in dismissing the quest by citizens for information is classic for dictators, denying people information which they are entitled to, and which the Government is legally obligated to provide.
The second incident has to do with the same minister arrogantly informing people that the oil contract is final, and there would be no further discussion relating to the contract. The public outrage continues to grow as, drip by drip by drip, more information is revealed about the contract. The minister has dismissed absolutely all calls for a re-examination of the contract. The Government has spoken, the matter is closed and the people be damned.
In the third incident, Minister Harmon, the right-hand man of President Granger, chastised the Auditor General for daring to speak to private companies in order to follow the money in the D’ Urban Park Development Project scandal, in which at least $1.4 billion was spent but cannot be accounted for. In the latest saga accompanying this scandal, the financial records cannot be found. Harmon, on behalf of APNU/AFC, has declared war on the Auditor General, letting him know that he has no business talking to the contractors. He insists that the Auditor General must deal only with the Government, but the Auditor General could neither get information from the Ministry of Public Infrastructure nor the D’Urban Park Development Inc, a private entity that APNU/AFC established under the leadership of Rupert Roopnaraine.
The Auditor General is doing his job, but APNU/AFC, like the dictator it is, wants him to be subservient. We can recall previous occasions when ministers chastised the Auditor General for wanting to audit the $US18 million that APNU/AFC secretly stashed away in the Bank of Guyana. Incidentally, like dictators do across the world, APNU/AFC is now suffocating the Auditor General’s Office by cutting its budget.
The fourth example is the confession of Minister Amna Ally that she was responsible for the Corriverton Town Council not being able to hold its annual flag-raising ceremony — something the Corriverton Town Council had done for forty-seven years previously. She claimed “it has to be Government’s way or no way”. The Corriverton Town Council had organised its flag-raising ceremony for 47 straight years, until this year. Minister Ally wanted them to have Minister Ramjattan speak. The Council did not object to Ramjattan speaking, it just did not want him to replace MP Anamayah, who was slated to be the feature speaker.
Since Minister Ally could not get her way, she torpedoed the event, with Police threatening to arrest the officials if they proceeded with the programme.
The dictatorial core of the APNU+AFC is more and more on display, with less and less disguise. The arbitrary appointment of the GECOM Chair, the threat to appoint a Chancellor of the Judiciary and a Chief Justice outside of the constitutional parameters, the seizing of land leases from farmers, the arbitrary closing of sugar estates, the sole-sourcing contracts are ample evidence that APNU/AFC, far from trying to disguise, is more comfortable flaunting, its authoritarian credentials. Our silence is its ally in imposing another era of dictatorship on the country. We must speak out now.
