Dear Editor,
I read the New Year message of President Granger in the press. I understand that as a politician and leader of his party he would try to put his administration in some good light. However, I did not expect to come to the conclusion that the APNU+AFC has lost touch with reality.
His remarks that his government was “promoting the good life for all…”, is only partially true. It is a fact that the elite created by this administration is enjoying a very good life indeed. They have given themselves a huge increase in salaries and the percentage increase in allowances is massive. Often far more than the month’s salary of the average police officer, teacher and nurse.
We also see the style in which they move around in huge convoys of shiny Prados. I am told that they have now acquired bullet-proof vehicles for the top echelons.
It is this good life that they are enjoying that has made them immune to the real situation in the country and the growing sufferings of the Guyanese people.
His claim of his regime; “pursuing economic prosperity…” sounds extremely hollow. Nowhere do we see any evidence of this.
In fact, in less than three years, production in most sectors has plummeted. The most startling is the sugar industry. Production in 2017 was a paltry 138,000 tons of sugar. In the rice sector, the situation is deteriorating. In many other areas production is falling constantly.
One of the reasons for this decline is the very many taxes imposed on persons and businesses in the productive sector. People planting kitchen gardens are being harassed for taxes, persons with donkey carts have to pay licence fees. All of this is eating into their meager income.
Instead of job creation this regime has caused thousands of jobs to be lost. Instead of hiring managers to administer Guysuco, the APNU+AFC regime hired liquidators to shut the sugar industry down. In addition, it has imposed another layer of elite with persons in their eighties and nineties on the industry. Each one of those pensioners is raking in more than one million dollars per month. The Board has increased their fees by hundreds of percentage points. All this imposed on an industry to kill it instead of reviving production.
Many small loggers have been forced out of the business due to the anti-Chinese hysteria promoted and encouraged by both APNU+AFC while in and out of office. In the meantime, Barama’s operations have been greatly downsized with hundreds of workers walking the roads with nothing to do.
The President seems ostrich-like having his head buried deep in the sand or the mudflat, when he said his government is: “…reducing divisions and maximising cohesion…”. His regime has done more than the PNC regime of 1964 to 1992 to promote divisions in our country.
The public service has almost been totally cleansed of Guyanese of Indian origin. His regime went on a mass dismissal of Indian Guyanese from government. Its recruitment policy is clearly biased against Indian Guyanese. Indo-Guyanese are discriminated against in almost every government run institution. In employment or in social sectors, education and other social sectors.
A good example of this is discriminatory policy that is now taking place in sugar. In January of 2015, the government of India had committed to helping Guyana in:
(1) building a new ferry to ply the Georgetown/Mabaruma route,
(2) to establish a modern IT Park, the most advanced in the region,
(3) the road to connect the East Coast with the East Bank highways; and
(4) soft loans to recapitalise the sugar industry.
This regime has accepted all but the recapitalisation of the sugar industry. Why?
The only credible answer is because the majority of workers and people that directly and indirectly depend on the sugar industry are Indian Guyanese. It is a blatant racial position of this regime. This decision will have serious consequences for the whole country and all our people.
Contrast that with the fact that billions of dollars are spent to subsidise electricity in Linden, while they stubbornly refuse to invest in an industry that can be revived and made profitable and employ thousands of persons.
How are they still speaking of social cohesion when this regime dismissed two thousand Amerindians at one go when they came to power.
They have seized the solar panels that the PPP/C government had procured for the Amerindian communities and placed them on government buildings including State House.
So far, the APNU+AFC regime has not given the Amerindian villages a single square inch of land, not even a blade of grass.
The talk of social cohesion is obviously an empty slogan.
The President boasted about raising minimum wage, old age pensions and social security. However, what the regime did could be likened to giving blood with one hand and extracting more of it from the other hand simultaneously. What he did not mention was the fact that by applying Value Added Tax (VAT) on the more than one hundred essential items the PPP/C government zero-rated, he has, in real terms, reduced the standard of living for the low-income people.
Moreover, the APNU+AFC regime has also removed the subsidies on electricity and water and placed VAT on them as well. They have stopped the $10,000 ‘Because We Care’ programme that ensured our children attend school.
Clearly, therefore, this regime has actually taken away the ‘good life’ that this group of citizens had enjoyed under the PPP/Civic administration. The gap between rich and poor has now become a gulf.
The President also spoke about security and protecting our citizens. Well, the grave economic situation that his regime has created has led to a big upsurge in crime. The crimes are economic crimes. The whole population is targeted. No one is safe. Maybe with the exception of the elite that has huge security with them. Some ministers even walk with bodyguards when they travel abroad, where they are hardly known.
Coupled with that is the move to de-professionalise the police. The removals and transfers are clearly being done in a discriminatory way. This regime is not interested in professionalism. They want blind loyalty to the APNU. (The AFC has little or no support). That has now become the main qualification. We are right back at the stage where the Police and Army had to swear loyalty to the leader and the PNC. Only a fine line still separate us from this.
Crime is actually spiraling out of control in the meantime.
The President spoke about upholding the dignity of our institutions. Yet it is his regime that is undermining our institutions, including our Constitution.
He himself has shown scant regard for the Chief Justice describing her decision as her opinion. It is the President who rejected a list of eighteen persons of high standing in our society garnered after the widest consultations with civil society, for the post of Chair of the Guyana Elections Commission. By so doing he has devalued that institution and has created the distinct impression that he and his cohorts are planning to rig our national elections. This is a glaring act of undermining and discriminatory on an important institution.
It is his nominee for Speaker of the National Assembly that is daily bringing that institution into disrepute with ruling that are unfair and totally biased against the opposition. He is destroying debates and discussions in that august body. He makes no pretense of being impartial.
It is this regime that daily violates the Constitution in relation to procurements, appointments and dismissals form our public service.
The President has it in his power to change these things but has not seen it fit to do so.
Finally, the regime has displayed a high degree of philistinism as they desecrate our national monuments, painting them green, the colour of this party.
Is this the President’s understanding of a Green Economy? These are symbols of the mindset of ‘Paramountcy of the Party’.
The President should know that those acts are leading to more and more alienation and not cohesion.
Clearly, the New Year message holds out no hope. It actually reflects a loss of reality by the regime.
Donald Ramotar
Former President
