Dear Editor,
In Sunday Stabroek’s editorial of May 13, 2012, the view was expressed that, “One cannot help but feel that the governing party has no idea what it is doing at the moment, or what it should be doing in the circumstances.“ I believe, however, there is more in the mortar than the pestle.
Ex-President Jagdeo was a shrewd command and control political strategist. Firstly, he recruited many contract workers to fill key positions in government and its agencies, and uncertain of their tenure they took special precautions to please their employer and did exactly as told in virtually any circumstance. They were usually more than delighted to follow patently risky instructions such as demonstrating in front of Parliament recently thereby undermining their impartial employment terms.
Secondly, he selected as his ministers non-threatening subordinates who had to tow his line at every turn, no questions asked, and with whom he could harmoniously co-exist. These were the people who got his generous pension package passed into law and worked insidiously to get the party back in power in return for them retaining their jobs with all the trimmings.
His successor continues to execute this strategy, but it has started to unravel. This is because of his seeming inability to enter the new uncharted territory of coalition governance, and provide national leadership under a changing environment aimed at addressing issues such as transparency, better financial management and control of the country’s scarce resources to stimulate economic growth and job creation, thereby reducing poverty.
A development strategy based on job creation and growth oriented policies needs to be formulated and implemented for a population more literate than skilled without much ado, if the underlying problem of the society whereby people who can’t find jobs resort to all sorts of unsavoury activities, making life intolerable for the rest of us.
Finally, the President, his ministers and entourage of advisers have been making many overseas trips during the past several months at great expense to this nation, while those suffering people from Linden to Lethem have been neglected and left to the ravages of floods and power outages because of lack of money to carryout urgent repairs to roads, bridges and provide fuel for the power plant. Therefore, the government needs to address the urgent needs of the people in positive ways rather than ignore them and flit away to all those overseas meetings which seem to be getting us nowhere.
Yours faithfully,
Charles Sohan
