Dear Editor,
What is crystal clear about this PNC-led coalition Administration is that it comprises a group of individuals who are out to get revenge on their magnanimous political enemy, the PPP/C; and they are doing it from the standpoint of what I call “vengeful economics.”
When they came into power, they had it all well thought out, and what we see at present is a plan being surgically executed. They realise that the PPP/C is too great a force to be put to rest by merely being illegally evicted from office; that has been an age-old tried and tattered plan, so they now go for something that would have a crippling effect on the PPP/C – the sugar workers and their hub of existence.
The PNC knows fully well where the power base of the PPP lies. That power lies in the rural hub of agriculture and sugar. It is where Cheddi Jagan was born and where the idea of freedom from servile indentureship originated — right there in the squalid logies of Port Mourant. There, freedom rang in the ears of that barefoot little boy named Cheddi Jagan. Against that backdrop, a free and independent Guyana, as we now know it, was spawned. So, the PNC, in their haste to wipe that PPP Freedom message from our memories, went for the jugular of the PPP.
So let’s not play around the fact of what the real intentions of the PNC are. They should be honest enough to tell the nation that they want to decimate the PPP as a party and as a “nation.”
Their modus operandi, then, is all centred on sugar and the sugar industry. True to their word, they have been very hypocritical in saying that they are trying to bring sugar into the era of profitability. According to their economic formula, to bring sugar into that line is to brutally close most, if not all, of the sugar estates. This formula, in their scheme of things, will cause the industry to become sustainable and profitable.
Okay, this may appear a good plan in the eyes of the casual onlooker; but if we are to go down the road of their reasoning, why talk only of sugar? What about bauxite? Is that industry profitable? Make public the accounts on bauxite. How much is its contribution to the economy? And what does it cost central Government to keep it afloat?
I speak as a matter of equity, what is good for one is equally good for the other. But, like I intimated earlier, they will never reveal those figures for public scrutiny, for fear of exposing their evil scheme. The results would show that sugar is a far greater asset than bauxite. They know it and all right-thinking individuals would attest to this fact. Ironically, the IMF told them thus; even their own team of “experts” came up with the same conclusion — that it is backward and unwise to decimate a productive sector.
So, the question comes back: Why not shut down bauxite? The answer is that they will never do that! So what is the prime objective for not facing that reality? The answer is that the PNC government would never shut that industry down, because it marks a place where a bastion of votes are accrued, and it is a power base for them; so they will continue to prop up the industry at all costs.
However, the sugar industry and the “people” that are contained therein are not particularly of interest to them. “Let us close down sugar; if not, render the industry crippled.” So the one dubious objective they would have achieved as a party is to bring the industry and the PPP’s sphere of existence to its knees. It is the naked truth.
But I have news for them: No country will prosper when it can express its biases in so blatant a fashion. The end result will be that the entire economy will succumb.
Respectfully
submitted,
Neil Adams
