…against PPP governance
If you think the five months of hell the PNC put Guyana through is the extent of their depraved lust for power, you’ve got another think coming. Of course, we got a glimpse when they threw 7000 sugar workers -responsible for 35,000 mouths to feed – onto the breadline without blinking an eye. But now we realise that was only the tip of an iceberg of callousness: while they were doing that, they were padding the Government payrolls with ‘God knows how many’ thousands of supporters at an average of at least $500,000 a clip!! And claiming the treasury couldn’t support a subsidy for GuySuCo.
When we finally get a total of that boondoggle, you can be sure it’ll be more than the $25 billion it would’ve taken to stabilise the sugar industry and bring it to a point of sale according to the COI appointed by Granger!! That would’ve kept those 7000 persons employed, preserved our assets that could’ve been sold for a handsome profit, and bring in foreign investors that would’ve most likely diversified the industry. But what the heck? That wasn’t the plan, was it? The plan was to destroy the PPP’s base.
But back to the feather bedding, where thousands of PNC supporters were drawing those fat paychecks without even showing up at the office, much less “at work”! We’re now discovering it wasn’t just the money for warm bodies…the PNC was strategically deploying a “poison pill” against the PPP were they to get back in office!!
Now, in Guyana, we don’t know much about “poison pills”, but in countries with stock markets, it’s a very common tactic used by stockholders to prevent “hostile takeovers”. The bottom line is they create a situation in which the person trying to buy the company has to concede defeat, because it would stretch them beyond their capabilities.
And this is the insidious plan of the PNC with the Government that the PPP took over after their 5-month war of attrition. They gave open-ended contracts to those thousands of mega-salaried contract workers, more accurately described as “political appointees”, who’re now refusing to resign with the change of administration. The plan, of course, is to first claim that the PPP is “victimising” those political appointees when they attempt to remove them. Because they hired mostly folks from their African-Guyanese constituency, the PNC will then move to shrill cries of “ethnic cleansing” as they did in 1992. Expect them to surge into the streets soon.
In the meantime, those poison pills will sabotage every initiative of the PPP in their effort to fix the mess the PNC left them.
But the PPP will have to stay the course. It’s the will of the people!!
…and bullyism rampant
The PNC’s poison pill tactic is most graphically illustrated by the behaviour of Joseph Harmon, the de facto second-in-command to Granger – who was just brought into the PNC’s Central Executive Council (CEC) – the party’s highest decision-making body. Now, Harmon was the General Secretary of APNU for six years, Chairman of the coalition’s elections campaign, who authorised the hiring of a Washington lobbying firm without Granger’s knowledge. Not to mention being made Director General in the MotP after he was stripped from the substantive ministerial position because he was an American citizen. Now, do you think the man was just a bureaucrat??
Well, he now claims he is, and can’t be fired!! Some think this might be due to the monthly $900,000 salary, duty allowance, $250,000; entertainment $100,000; housekeeping allowance $128,400; a gardener allowance $65,000; unlimited local and international calls – and of course the duty-free vehicles (plural)!! But that’s chicken feed for the Chinese-connected Harmon.
Harmon’s the essence of the poison pill!!
…and the end game
Just as the PNC thought they could wear down the PPP during their barefaced elections’ rigging, they obviously intend to do the same now that the latter is in Government.
Guyanese will have to rally again to stop this outrage.
