Why did the government veto the 39 micro projects?

Dear Editor,

In a recent letter, ‘The press should investigate the killing of the miners,’ published in SN on June 27, I asked the government agencies concerned to explain why the 39 micro projects  financed by the EU were vetoed by the Guyana government. Your paper reported that one project was at Ithaca, on the West Bank of the Berbice River, another at Villages 28 to 30 on the West Coast Berbice and another at Blankenburg, West Coast, Demerara.

Please correct my impression if necessary, but so far as I know the government has offered no explanation.
I know these villages and to some extent their populations. The Berbice names of spokespersons  and developers are African Guyanese  persons. The developer and spokesperson at Blankenburg is an Indian Guyanese woman.

In the absence of an official explanation, I feel free to conclude that the decision to veto was based on racial and political discrimination. In the cases of West Berbice and Blankenburg I can even claim that there was gender discrimination.

I say all of this because if the government had acted on any acceptable ground, it would have told the public. These rulers who have Marxism-Leninism written all over their cloaks do not accept that ‘every cook must learn to govern.’

The President, however, has the power of veto – any bill coming to him from the National Assembly, and of bills only. We seem to be developing, not for the first time, a new unwritten and secret administrative code.
Their refusal to explain their official action is also yet another example of the arrogance and disrespect that is their hallmark.

I strongly disagree with those who claim that there cannot be an elected dictatorship. We know a dictatorship mainly by its behaviour, not by how it achieved office.

I have noted that an IMF official, Mr Rizavi, has credited the Guyanese authorities with being able to maintain macroeconomic stability. He must have come from an older school than mine, but this is not a comment on his helpful statements.

I trust that the  public will realise that the government could have explained its veto if its veto had been proper or for good reason. I hope too that the government  through its back door, the talkative GINA perhaps, will confound all that I have said on this matter, by finally making a transparent statement on its veto, showing the roles of Go Invest and of the silent minister whose life partner works in the  main financial oversight agency.

I trust too that the groups concerned will protest directly and in writing to the European representatives in Guyana.

Misleading the nation about tax laws and their application, railing at a senior member of the business community in public for representing his class, denying the year’s subvention to Critch-low Labour College on partisan grounds, failing to prosecute an employer in the interest of a defenceless woman employee, are offences before us for some time. Failure to give reasons for a highhanded veto of 39 micro projects for people willing to produce, and failure to answer a reader’s question whether or not the financial favourites blundered in the way VAT was administered are only some of the recent examples of how ruthless an elected government can be.

I hope soon to seek, for the benefit of the public and for my own benefit, some modern economic instruction from the IMF representative.

Yours faithfully,
Eusi Kwayana