Dear Editor,
Christopher Ram’s article in your ‘Business Page’ of Sunday, December 7, captioned ‘Who’s left now?’ made some broad generalizations with distorted and selected events that did not do justice to a pertinent topic.
Ram stated that when Dr Jagan returned to office in 1992 he continued policies in relation to the IMF lock, stock and barrel; here he is referring to the privatization policies started by the Hoyte administration. This is totally inaccurate. When the PPP took office in 1992 the entire privatization process was put on hold. This delayed the signing of the Extended Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) with the IMF. Moreover, privatization is the cornerstone of IMF/World Bank policy advice.
Only after a CGCED meeting was held in Georgetown in early 1994 at the Tower Hotel backed by strong lobbying from President Jimmy Carter, that the IMF/World Bank accepted the position of the then Jagan government that the policy framework paper prepared by the PPP/CIVIC government be used as the criteria for privatization − and only for loss-making state corporations. Further, entities like GUYSUCO, GUYOIL, Guyana Shipping and a few others were excluded from the privatization list.
Jagan’s position on privatization was questioned by the political and business elite even before he took office in 1992. Ram’s own company, Ram and McRae, hosted a seminar at the Pegasus Hotel early in 1994 when then Minister of Finance Asgar Ally laid down the government’s position on privatization. The response of the local businesses from the floor was that they believed Minister Ally but not the government. Such were the pressures that General Secretary of the TUC, the late Joseph Pollydore came out publicly to defend Dr Jagan’s position on privatization at the TUC annual conference.
By the time of Dr Jagan’s death in March 1997, a 5% share at the Pegasus had been sold to NIS, a 30% share at a commercial entity had been sold to a local group as well as the joint venture of GUYNEC; these were the entities privatized, so how can one consider this privatization lock, stock and barrel?
Ram cynically refers to the West On Trial as Dr Jagan’s seminal autobiography that “wore proudly his allegiance to socialism while blaming the British/US axis for all forms of plots and misdeeds.” The US and British governments shamefully collaborated in ousting a legally and democratically elected Jagan government in the ’60s. This is well documented.
Ram failed to look at neo-liberalism as the new ideology that peaked with the fall of communism and coincided with the period of Dr Jagan’s return to office in 1992, and accepted by most as “the end of history.” He did not mention Dr Walter Rodney’s influence on left thinking. Rodney accepted a Marxist materialist interpretation of history in his analyses and publications. Further, Rodney agreed with Marx on the historical development of societies.
Finally, the classical studies of Smith, Ricardo and Marx still stand in analyzing the current world crises. Keynes was able to stand on their shoulders to interpret the Great Depression, and was the founder of macro-economic theory that evolved into the IS-LM curve model. Time and space do not permit me to deal with the other issues raised, like debt relief and the new international order. However, the current environment provides enough evidence − statistical, circumstantial and anecdotal for even better analysis of the world economy in the future.
Yours faithfully,
Rajendra Rampersaud
Is this rebuttal opening a can of worms? Why was the privatisation process put on hold? What was in ESAF to cause the IMF to delay signing? What was it about the PPP that caused the IMF to put a stop to the privatisation process? What conditions were laid out for the resumation of privatisation? Was there an addition to the original Policy Framework Paper that the IMF insisted on?
Mr.Rampersaud and Mr.Bharrat Jagdeo both worked at the State Planning Secretariat during the same period and are bossom friends.So I am not surprised by this article.
What I need Mr.Rampersaud to answer, is to tell the people of Guyana where all the privatization and lotto funds gone.
All this baloney about Jagan, PPP, Jagdeo is only taking the country further down the drain.
The country is now like the drains, backed up with garbage. We need to clean out the PPP, PNC and start the country a fresh with a new breed of politicians and different parties.
For the last 40 years or more guyanese have been tolerating the same crap with no results. We need change badly.
Lord, send us a massiah!!!!
Mr. Rampersaud description is correct. But not the whole truth. Mr. Ram is also correct. The PPP in its initial days, under Asgar Ally followed the PNC ERP “lock, stock and barrel” which was why the positive results early in the “dawn of a new ERROR”. Asgar Ally had once said that Jagan told the Carter Centre, WB and IMF that he agreed with the EPR in principle and that he would follow it. Jagan said that the people were not consulted and that his party had no input in the ERP. Thus the birth of the CGCED and the Carter Center support under Dr. Roger Norton to develop a development strategy around the ERP. Previous to the CGCED, there was a 13 person team from the international donor community present in Guyana talking to all of the ministers about their ‘wish list’. This was a forerunner to the CGCED. Rajendra and Bharrat and Raymond Rambo Gaskin were at the time advisers to Asgar. Certain documents of minutes of meetings between Cheddi and certain persons….Jimmy Carter; Senator Kennedy; IMF, WB, IDB officials; Sally Cohen?? (some US diplomat)were in circulation in a selected circle (of course it went outside). Dr. Ivor Mitchell (yes, later of the PNC/R) and Asgar Ally were at these meetings with Cheddi pre October 1992 before he got into office. Mitchell was professor at clarke Atlanta and Asgar, Jamaica central bank deputy governor. Mitchell was a GOinvest Czar and Asgar minister of finance. I am sure Mr. Ram saw the papers I am referring to or heard about the contents.
Bharrat deviated drastically from the general EPR and concentrated on one aspect which was debt reduction and payment relief. As a part of the overall policy agenda, he had to roll in and sustain other policies which were more operational in nature as oppose to long term structural….so we saw emphasis on tax policies such as the introduction of VAT as opposed to policies on reforming the tax structure and system, for example.
What Rajendra failed to do in this letter is to point out the wisdom in the existing policy and identify, if necessary a better direction. From where I stand I can see that a huge mistake was made