The newly elected Leader of AFC’s dishonesty, inaccuracies

Dear Editor,
Having reviewed the newly elected leader of the Alliance for Change (AFC), Mr. Nigel Hughes’ “victory” speech that he delivered at the party’s 8th congress, I would like to address a few things he mentioned, that were factually inaccurate.
Mr. Hughes contended that the incumbent government is undertaking multi-billion-dollar projects without any feasibility studies. Specifically, he was referring to the gas-to-energy (GtE) project. In the same breath, he put forward the case that all political parties should agree on the development plan for the country, such that whenever there is a change in government, there is no disruption and change of plans. The AFC leader perhaps forgot that a feasibility study was done for the GtE project. It was actually done under his own coalition government, the APNU+AFC, which in part, aided the incumbent government’s decision regarding the said project. So, for him to assert that the project is being carried out without a feasibility study, is a totally false assertion. The referenced study can be found on the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) website. Additionally, several other supplementary studies were done internally by the technical staff of the ministry.
Coming back to the point where he argued that all political parties should sign on to a national development plan, it doesn’t appear that he appreciates the process in which policymaking is conducted. The incumbent government has presided over the development of several national development strategies, starting with (i) the National Development Strategy (1996), (ii) the Poverty Reduction Strategy (2000), (iii) the National Competitiveness Strategy (2006), (iv) the Low Carbon Development Strategy (2009), and (v) the updated Low Carbon Development Strategy (2022-2030). All of these strategies were developed, inter alia, the contribution of the business sector organizations, civil society groups, representatives from the indigenous communities, and Guyanese professionals, coupled with open public consultation and engagement with the citizens at large.
The political parties contribute as well, mainly through debates in the National Assembly, and outside of the National Assembly, within the public domain through several mediums.
Contrary to the above methodology consistently employed by the incumbent government, the former APNU+AFC government produced a “Green State Development Strategy” (GSDS) during their tenure (2015-2020), which was put together by an internship consultant from the United Nations. More interestingly, a study of that document revealed that it was a “cut” and “paste” document from the aforementioned existing national development strategies, whereby various parts were taken from all of the abovementioned documents. Yet again, we hear a repeat by the AFC leader for “international experts” to craft our development plans.
Of key note is the difference in the approach to policymaking by the PPP/C government versus their opponents, the APNU+AFC. One would appreciate that any national development plan for the country ought to be developed in consultation with and the approval of the people of Guyana; not the political parties per se. And, as I have demonstrated, the methodologies employed by the different administrations are in stark contrast to each other.

The AFC leader referred to a “study” he had done to show statistical evidence of discrimination and claimed that the government never challenged those statistics. This is another outright falsehood. The government challenged those statistics and disproved those statistics. I had also challenged those statistics and disproved those numbers, including, exposing the flawed methodology of the study.
Interestingly, the AFC leader undertook to apologize for his party’s failures in government, and to examine where they faltered in government so that the mistakes of the past are not repeated. However, there is no need to reconstruct a post-mortem analysis thereof. The reasons for the AFC’s failure, and collectively, the APNU+AFC can be summarized as follows:
• Dishonesty,
• Political Opportunism,
• Unethical conduct in public office (the case of a former minister approving government contracts to her own private company),
• Contractionary fiscal policies, poor economic management, and incompetence, and
• Multiple breaches of the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act, in particular, as well as other laws, and constitutional excesses.
Of note, the AFC leader is already committing at least two of those mistakes cited above, as I have so established herein. These are (i) dishonesty: I have established at least three instances of him being dishonest in his “victory” remarks, and (ii) a repeat of the same issues of unethical conduct/conflicts of interest that he is embroiled in, whereby he has already stated publicly that he will not act on the concerns of conflicts of interests at this time.
Summarily, there is the issue of conflict of interest, which I have already written on separately. You would expect that since he has campaigned on the notion of “integrity”, that he would uphold the highest degree of integrity, but this is not the case. I will deal with this particular issue in some more detail subsequently. Moreover, at least three (3) instances of inaccuracies and/or dishonesty were established on the part of the newly elected AFC leader in “his victory remarks”. For ease of reference, the links below are two pieces that were written by this author challenging the study that he claimed no one challenged.

Sincerely,
Joel Bhagwandin