Dear Editor,
Based on the evidence we in the Alliance For Change (AFC) now have in our possession, the financial mess that Guyana is in, is even worse than we thought in December 2010 when we were strategizing on our Action Plan. It is clearly evident now that the assets of the taxpayers have been significantly diluted and left very exposed by this PPP Government.
Thus the public utterances from none other than the PPP’s Presidential Candidate, Ramotar that `the Board of GuySuCo cannot be blamed for the company’s woes’ will find its place in history as one of the most deceitful statements ever made by a Guyanese politician. Let me clarify very early, this is not a personal attack on Mr Ramotar since from what I know of him, like our own Mr Ramjattan, he is a very caring father and husband. I do not know Mr Granger but what I have heard about him, he is also a good father figure and husband. So Guyana is fortunate to have three men with strong family values in this 2011 race.
This letter however is about Donald’s professional track record at Guysuco. To talk of 129,000 tonnes in 1990 is nothing but massaging the truth without proper context. Any skilled analyst will clearly advise his audience that a comparison must always be done with context in mind. What Hoyte did was deliver a sugar industry to the PPP that was on the upswing. What Hoyte did was produce more sugar at the end of his term than this Ramotar Board produced in 2010. Mr Ramotar these facts cannot be wished away.
The following graph is a snapshot of GuySuCo production under the PPP Govern-ment but includes the last year of the Hoyte production cycle -1992. It clearly shows that Hoyte handed over to Dr. Jagan an industry that was producing 247,010 tonnes of sugar. Donald Ramotar’s Board in 2010 produced 217,869 tonnes, 12% less than what Hoyte produced when he handed GuySuCo over to Dr. Jagan. That is the fact, not the manipulated version of the truth that Ramotar is attempting to propagate.
What is interesting from the graph is that in times of increasing sugar prices, the Donald Ramotar Board supervised a rapid decline in sugar production. Clearly his economics is muddled since in times of increasing prices, one increases production to expand one’s wealth.
Any willing mind, whether trained or untrained, will observe that the PPP Board, in which Donald Ramotar was a principal anchor and participant, supervised the dilution of the people’s wealth in Guysuco over the last 18 years. This chart shows from one angle how the Jagdeo Government/Ramotar Board clearly abdicated their responsibility to the people of Guyana in managing Guysuco.
I would like to remind Mr Ramotar that the primary responsibility of the board of directors is to protect the shareholders’ assets and to ensure they receive a decent return on their investment. Where is the return for the taxpayers of Guyana when billions of dollars are taken from them on a yearly basis by way of the land deals to buttress Guysuco’s cash flows? Where are their returns Mr. Ramotar?
In business jargon, he should have been demonstrating to the Guyanese people how much he and his colleagues on the board have planned for the taxpayers, monitored the performance of the management team and taken corrective actions along the way so that the return on their investment is maximized. The board of Guysuco failed to offer quality leadership at sweating the assets to produce cash inflows for the owners (the people of Guyana). Thus, Mr. Ramotar cannot be absolved of this responsibility.
He is one of the principal architects that “mucked up” the sugar belt, Guyana’s largest source of employment and thus his track record reveals he is not the most eligible to lead Guyana. If what he did at Guysuco, which is smaller than Guyana, is expanded to the Guyana scale at the presidential level, can you imagine where Guyana will be in 2016? Would the voters want to take more risk with this bunch of intellectually ruined that now control the PPP?
But Mr Ramotar in addition to being on the Board was a former union man at GAWU and thus to witness how he supervised the uncaring treatment meted out to sugar workers is unforgivable. His entire political existence is because of sugar workers and yet he let them down again and again when he was put into a position to help them. Thus, there is a major trust deficit here.
But what was the most insensitive statement of them all was that the Skeldon fiasco is a “temporary thing”. How can he as a former union man tell the workers that their economic stagnation is a temporary thing? I trust he understands that the PPP tied the economic well-being of the sugar workers to the malfunctioning Skeldon factory and he is most guilty of strategizing in this sub-optimal fashion.
He is one of the most powerful members of the board with a constituency and thus he sanctioned and approved the Jagdeo hare-brained scheme in the sugar belt. So why is he in true Jagdeo style trying to pass the buck today? What will prevent him from passing the buck as the people’s economic well-being deteriorates further if he is elected President of Guyana?
The Alliance For Change under our astute presidential candidate, Mr. Ramjattan is a man of ultimate integrity who will not pass the buck, who will not lie to you and who has assembled a world class team of technicians to help him face the challenges that this bunch of PPP=Jagdeo=Ramotar political marauders will bequeath to us after the elections.
As one of our strategies to supplement the cash inflow into the sugar industry, we are already engaging some Brazilian investors in developing the bio-fuel (including ethanol) industry in the sugar belt. To save the Demerara estates we will produce ethanol for local consumption under our E-10 proposal and in the Canje Basin we will produce ethanol for the US market by way of the Caribbean Basin Initiative.
I trust that sugar workers are reading Mr Ramotar’s statements and reconciling them with his history of poor delivery.
For the first time in the history of Guyana, there is a real political alternative to the PPP and it is the AFC. I ask all our people who have not snapped out of the racist bubble that the PPP and PNC has blown around you over the last 45 years, pop it and vote on issues.
Yours faithfully,
Sasenarine Singh
