After the PPP/C took office in 1992, the privatization process was put on hold

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