The hypocrisy of those who proudly built Durban Park for more than a billion dollars

Dear Editor,
In all my political career, I have avoided ever disagreeing with Gail Teixeira. I will take the liberty of doing so at least one time. I have to disagree with her and a number of ministers and government MPs when they declared in Parliament, during the Budget 2025 debate, that the PNC-led APNU/AFC built nothing after spending more than $1.2 trillion between 2015 and 2020.
We must give “Jack his jacket”. I will name two things the PNC-led APNU/AFC built.
The first one of these two things that we must give the PNC-led APNU/AFC credit for between 2015 and 2020 is today a colossal environmental disaster and eyesore in Georgetown.
The David Granger-led, PNC-led APNU/ AFC did build the “new” Durban Park Stadium. It is still standing, barely, as a derelict monstrosity. This was one of the first projects completely conceived by the David Granger-led APNU/AFC cabinet and touted as a legacy project.
More than a billion dollars were expended, and are still not accounted for. Indeed, the total management of the funds was not only outside Government’s accountability laws, rules and guidelines; there is enough evidence for malfeasance in public office prosecution.
This “new” stadium was supposed to replace the National Park as the preferred venue for the annual Independence Day flag-raising event and other national events. It prominently stands there in Georgetown as a stark reminder of cluelessness, lack of vision, incompetence, and an ugly monument of corruption and wastefulness.
The stench from this monstrosity that was built by APNU/AFC, about which they bragged and continue to brag, nauseates people far beyond Georgetown. This is David Granger’s legacy. This is the PNC’s legacy. This is the PNC-led APNU/AFC legacy.
The second thing which we must give them credit for building are the arches. There are a few new arches beyond the ones that the Forbes Burnham-led PNC built in the 1960s and 1970s that the Granger-led, PNC-led APNU/AFC spent enormous financial resources, time and energy to build.
Two of those arches were donated to them by the private sector. Granger had stated at its commissioning that the $20 million arch on the East Coast Highway near the University of Guyana, donated by a private company, that among other things, market pharmaceuticals in Guyana signalled the vibrancy of the Caribbean economy and was a tribute of corporate investment in Guyana.
He did not then speak, nor has anyone of his colleagues spoken, about a questionable transaction that saw a private company getting a pharmaceutical contract worth over $606M for medicines which, for the same quantity, the PPP government had paid less than $100M for.
The PNC has a fetish obsession with arches. They have never invested as much capital, whether it is financial or human, the same passion, on building health centres and hospitals, schools or other infrastructures as they do with arches.
Had they invested the same energy and passion on the Amaila Falls Hydro Project, we would have had a quantum leap in energy generation and cheaper electricity today. One day, students and researchers will study why this “arch” obsession dominates the PNC’s psychology.
This is the albatross the young people who are their loyal supporters, and the young opposition MPs, have been given to carry around their necks forever by David Granger, PNC, the AFC, the WPA, and the several one-man or one-woman political parties.
Now Aubrey Norton, Nigel Hughes and David Hinds insist that this is a deserving legacy that young supporters must be proud of.
Faced with the daunting reality of Government ministers and MPs, Government supporters and citizens all across the country pointing to projects constructed by the Irfaan Ali-led PPP government, the PNC-led APNU/AFC MPs found themselves in the Budget 2025 debate resorting to the most ridiculous criticisms and justifications why they did not build anything of worth between 2015 and 2025.
One of the early justifications for not building anything and to deny the Irfaan Ali-led PPP government credit, the opposition MPs sought shelter in the argument that the PPP government has access to “oil” money, which they did not have.
But that may only explain not doing as many projects as the present PPP government is doing; it is not an explanation for not doing anything.
In any case, the PPP had no “oil” money to support Budgets 2020 and 2021. “Oil” money supported only 23% of Budget 2022, 27% of Budget 2023, 29% of Budget 2024, and 37% of Budget 2025.
The then PNC-led APNU/AFC Government raised more than $90 billion annually in increased taxation. What did they do with the “extra” tax-based revenues they generated each year? For that matter, almost all of the $23B worth of gold at the Bank of Guyana was sold. Similarly, almost all of the more than $100B in reserve (local and foreign currency) was squandered.

Money therefore cannot explain the stark contrast in the track records of the PPP and the PNC-led APNU/AFC. In fact, monies were already secured by the PPP government for various transformative projects between 2015 and 2020 under APNU/AFC.
The CJIA modernization and expansion project was already in the books, had started under the PPP in 2012. They just had to complete it. Other than reducing the scope without reducing the cost, APNU/AFC did not finish the project, and the PPP government had to return to complete the project.
APNU/AFC also inherited funded projects for the expansion of the East Coast and East Bank Highways and the West Demerara Highway. They did not finish these projects either, consumed all the money, and the PPP had to return to complete the projects.
Indeed, for the Sheriff Street Project, the secured funds they inherited were consumed, but there was little or nothing to show for the Sheriff Street Project.
The PNC-led APNU/AFC’s favourite retort to combat the massively popular physical infrastructure successes of the PPP government has been that “you cannot eat roads and bridges, schools and hospitals”. But they cannot tell us which of the physical infrastructure projects, which highway, which street, which bridge, which school, which hospital, which housing scheme, which farm-to-market road, which pump station, they would want to abandon.
But to show their cluelessness, while on one hand condemning the PPP for building too much, since people cannot eat these things, they at the same time promise that, in government, they would do even more.
Aubrey Norton, whose party built no highway, no school, no hospital, no housing scheme, etc., now promises to build four bridges across the Essequibo, and highways that connect every community in Guyana, including a ring highway; and allow one to start from Georgetown, drive along the coastline all around Guyana, and return to Georgetown.
The party that proudly wears its track record of building nothing of worth now shamelessly and barefacedly look the Guyanese people in their eyes and tell them that whatever the PPP conceives of and build, they will build even more. There are NOT enough gullible Guyanese that would believe them.

Sincerely,
Dr Leslie Ramsammy