The COVID-19 pandemic, which erupted in China last December and has now spread across the globe, has presented a unique challenge to even the most developed nations that have served as our model of development since independence.
In Guyana, peaking concomitantly with the elections crisis precipitated by the PNC’s insistence on clinging to power through the blatant rigging of the polls, the Government’s response has unfortunately been more political than medical. This posture guarantees that the disaster we have seen inflicted on the economies of the developed world will be more intense and long lasting here.
The Government launched what it dubbed a “Ministerial COVID-19 Task Force” on March 14, less than two weeks after the General Elections of March 2, which by then had become mired in fraud with the manipulations of Region Four Returning Officer (RO) Clairmont Mingo. The Task Force was headed by caretaker PM Moses Nagamootoo and included eight Ministers, but unlike Trinidad that experienced its first case at the same time, did not institute a coherent response immediately.
On April 5, a draconian national plan, patterned on a colonial-era response to epidemics, was finally unfurled. It involved a national curfew; restriction on working places to permit only essential services and the closing of the international airports along with powers given to the authorities to seize properties in the course of their dealing with the pandemic.
These martial-law type restrictions were viewed with great apprehension that was further heightened when on April 24, Joseph Harmon, the erstwhile head of the Ministry of the Presidency, was made the CEO of the Secretariat of what was now described as the National Coronavirus Task Force (NCTF). He immediately inserted himself into the political process by mandating there could only be 10 workstations at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC) to conduct the recount of the ballots that had been agreed to by then to resolve the impasse occasioned by the Mingo corruption of the Statements of Poll tabulation. The Opposition had proposed at least double that number since the restricted number would have stretched out the recount to an unconscionable 25 days at best. As it turned out even this had to be extended.
The politicisation of the COVID response extended as far as insisting that the results of tests on suspected COVID infected patients be sent directly to the Minister of Health – not coincidentally, also the PNC Chair – rather than the medical personnel treating the patients. Finally, there was a surprise announcement by the NCTF that the decrepit Ocean View Hotel, on the outskirts of Georgetown, and owned by a Government supporter and financier, would be appropriated at an unknown cost and be converted to a dedicated COVID hospital at a cost of at least $1 billion. At this point, not even the building has been completed.
Against this background, it is not surprising that the COVID infection and death rates, continue to escalate with the latter almost double that of other countries. As such, it is expected that even though a phased loosening of the restrictions of the COVID plan has begun, Guyana’s economy will be adversely affected for a much longer period than say Trinidad and Tobago, where there was the very early and disciplined non-political response to the epidemic.
But in addition to the COVID blow to our economy, Guyana and Guyanese have received an even more vicious double whammy in the form of the forces the PNC has unleashed in the wake of their attempted heist of the elections. Directly, they have forced the international community, led by the US in the form of visa restrictions, to take action against those in the Government and GECOM who conspired to subvert democracy here. Almost certainly, these will be ratcheted up to more personal sanctions such as freezing of the perpetrators’ assets. But the greater damage will fall on the country, since the international business community that is critical to our economic recovery and development will have become very skittish in dealing with the country.
