…under the carpet
One of the reasons why folks have to step warily when they’re around the PNC is: the PNC have swept so many scandals under their carpet that you just can’t walk straight!! Who knows what you may stumble over? President Granger seems to believe in the “out of sight, out of mind” school of disaster management; rather incredible for an old soldier, don’t you think?
When we were little kids, we believed that when we closed our eyes, the vase we’d just crashed disappeared; but our mothers’ ministrations with the whip taught us otherwise!
But not Granger, when it comes to the misdeeds of his administration. Take corruption, which he vowed to eliminate. The whale looming under that section of the PNC’s carpet of course is the “negotiation” of the oil contract by Trotman with the consortium headed by ExxonMobil. And it’s not just the insulting, paltry US$18 million bonus when it should’ve been ten times that amount; there’s the insult of boasting that he’d DOUBLED the royalty from one per cent to two per cent!! So, rather than one crumb, we should be thankful for getting two crumbs. The Ghanaian President must be snickering at Granger every time he sees him, since he can’t avoid THAT blue whale under the carpet!!
Just look at the bonus, royalty, share of profits, taxes on the oil companies’ profits HIS government was able to extract! And yet Trotman hasn’t been subjected to any investigation…unlike in the case of the Ghanaian first oil contract.
While other corrupt actions: such as the Jubilee Stadium; the sole-sourced, non-tendered DHB design contract; the giveaway of seized vehicles; the sale of the sugar assets as scrap metal; monies deposited into private accounts etc, might pale into insignificance compared with the billions of US dollars lost in oil, they’re important because they have a “demonstrator effect” at every level of government, including out in the regions.
“If the big ones can dip their hands into the till, why not us?”
Another bump under the PNC carpet is Granger’s refusal to discipline any member of the administration for conceded transgressions. Take the serial sorties on the wild side by Simona “I is” Broomes, who might’ve left the bush, but clearly the bush hasn’t left her! There was her hauling those working girls from Bartica to Georgetown just because she had a beef with the hotel owners. Wasn’t that the job of the Police? Then came the “boom out” from the hallowed chambers of Parliament, and the infamous “fried rice” fracas at New Thriving that put one poor guard in jail. The country still awaits the promised inquiry.
The problem is that bumpy carpets have now become the norm with the PNC.
…the NAM busts
You could’ve knocked your Eyewitness over with a feather after he saw the pic of the Ghanaian President laying a wreath at the Non-Aligned Monument (NAM) at Company Path. Your Eyewitness passes that spot practically every day, and he’s hard pressed to believe his eyes! Such a transformation in a matter of days? Jeez! Maybe if the M&CC had some ‘big name’ guests over the years, who knows, City Hall wouldn’t be falling down today?
But back to the Non-Aligned Monument. Of course the Ghanaian connection is that the then President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, was one of the five leaders of that seminal movement in the sixties, when the Less Developed World had tried to chart a path between the two superpowers – the US and USSR – who were competing for world dominance. Ghana, Guyana and Indonesia have since had their governments removed; Yugoslavia broke into pieces; and India plodded along.
Finally, the USSR collapsed, leaving one superpower standing — the mighty US of A!
…prices upwards
The Bank of Guyana has just released some info that caps the depressing news on the economy for ordinary folks who’ve been hard hit by massive rising unemployment: prices of basic foodstuffs have headed upwards.
Granger’s PNC continues to map Burnham’s disastrous trajectory; this time, with inflation.
