Hughes going along the old dishonest and racist path

Dear Editor,
I read with interest the report in the local press on July 9, 2024: of Mr Nigel Hughes’s first press conference as Leader of the Alliance For Change (AFC). I was disappointed.
My disappointment stemmed from Mr Hughes having adopted the same methodology of the former and present PNC and AFC leaders. From the very beginning, he has chosen to misrepresent and distort events in our country. Same old PNC politics.
It was reported that he urged the Government not to undertake big projects without feasibility studies, and used as his example the Skeldon Expansion Project in the sugar industry.
That is very far from the truth. That project had a very good plan. It was conceived at a time when the European Union was saying that they would bring an end to the Sugar Protocol which had guaranteed prices for sugar-producing countries in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) regions.
The PPP/C Government joined with their ACP colleagues to resist the EU plan. At the same time, they began to plan for the eventuality of the EU succeeding to abandon the decades-old agreement. The EU eventually did, after it had lost a case brought by Australia and Brazil to the World Trade Union (WTO).
The administration was faced with two options: one was to close the industry down, and the other was to take steps to keep it going and save jobs in the industry. Government chose to take steps to save the industry and jobs. It charged the GuySuCo Board to come up with a feasible plan for the industry. The Board tapped into the talents it had in the sector and used international experts to craft the plan.
Booker/Tate (BT) was chosen as the international expert and engineer of the projects.
The plan was to transform the sugar industry from being just a producer of raw sugar into a complex with other revenue streams, and at the same time to reduce the average cost of producing raw sugar. It envisaged producing electricity (co-generation); a new distillery, and a refinery to process our raw sugar into industrial sugar (white sugar), among other value-added products. The plan was sound, the problem was with its implementation, which Booker Tate, the international expert, was contracted to do.
Without going into details, it was the board’s view that Booker Tate was responsible for the many problems that developed with that project.
Because of that conviction, the board withheld payments to Booker Tate, and BT took the issue to court. GuySuCo crossed-charged Booker Tate, and I thought we had a good chance of winning the case and make BT pay for its poor project management.
Unfortunately, when the Government was changed in 2015, the PNC/AFC regime decided to release the withheld money to Booker Tate and to withdrew the board’s case against BT from the court. That allowed Booker Tate to walk away with millions.
The PNC/AFC regime then proceeded to close estates and dismiss thousands of workers. That was a blatant racial and political attack on sugar workers, whom the PNC/AFC considered to be PPP supporters. From the PNC/AFC warped point of view, this was aimed at damaging the PPP. I say this because, at the time the PNC/AFC decided to close the estates, the industry was overcoming the problems at Skeldon. This can be confirmed by the production figures of 2014 and 2015, when Skeldon took the lead in sugar production.
Moreover, the technical team that the PNC/AFC put together to examine the operation of the industry did not recommend closing estates.
Mr Hughes must have known all this, since the issue was ventilated publicly for many years. As lately as April of this year, Mr Vickram Ouditt and I had an exchange on the issue. The debate was not the lack of planning, but whether the plan was changed.
In addition to all of the above, Mr Hughes has had to be aware, since he was Booker Tate’s lawyer in the case against GuySuCo while being chairman of the AFC. Therefore, for him to have made the statement he is reported to have made is a deliberate attempt to mislead the public for narrow political ends. He is obviously practising the politics of deception.
In closing, let me say that almost all the big projects that were undertaken by successive PPP/Civic Governments were carefully planned, and all had feasibility studies done. The only one I am aware of where the PPP/C Government did not go along with the advice of the experts relates to the Bauxite operations in Linden. The experts advised that the company be closed, but both Presidents Jagan and Jagdeo refused to do so. They both worked to save the industry and workers’ jobs. Their decision did not only save the industry, but allowed Linden to remain a viable community.
Mr Hughes should aim at putting some integrity to the Opposition’s propaganda, instead of going along the old dishonest and racist path.

Sincerely,
Donald Ramotar