Dear Editor,
Wealth stolen from the people is openly masqueraded in a PPP Guyana with no consequences. The PNC encouraged the same larcenous impulse within society and like the PPP did nothing to combat it. Where the PNC differs from the PPP is in the sheer volume of corruption under the PPP. Don’t get me wrong, the will to steal from the public coffers was no different between the PNC and the PPP. It is just that the pilferable resources were far less under the PNC than the PPP because of various factors. I am a firm believer that despite the current holier-than-thou pretensions of its members and supporters, the PNC party apparatchiks would have stolen just as atrociously as the PPP if the PNC had been in power for the past 20 years and had been exposed to the kind of financial resources the PPP had access to for the last 20 years. The PNC simply did not have the means to steal at the same staggering level as the PPP.
With the allegations of corruption emerging from City Hall, it is evident that the capacity of persons in officialdom to engage in alleged corruption has flourished under the PPP. It is also clear that such alleged corruption has no political distinction. Georgetown City Hall is PNC territory and the bulk of those who lead the administration there are PNC-ers. Some PPP zealots have seized upon this turn of allegedly corrupt events to seek to deflect from the massive unrelenting scale of corruption the PPP has enabled in Guyana. It is a shockingly inept exercise of intellectual weakness for anyone to compare and contrast the scams and irregularities under the PPP with City Hall. There is no comparison. The bigger problem here is the pervasiveness of corruption and the unwillingness of the PPP to tackle it. It is truly disgusting that the PPP had put so much pressure on City Hall over the years over all manner of issues and legitimately so at times, yet when allegations of corruption surface, the PPP central government tries to use the shameful events at City Hall for political gain.
This is the same PPP that has suspended local government elections since 1994 and had no problem with a known incompetent like Hamilton Green running the country’s biggest city for 18 years now without a challenge. That a scam of this magnitude could occur under the watch of the PPP’s Local Government Ministry and in an entity because of its political makeup that is viewed with grave suspicion and as warranting intense review by the PPP suggests the PPP is either hands-down the most incompetent government ever or some within the PPP turned a blind eye to the known wrongs at City Hall or both. The events at City Hall tell us that corruption is alive and well in a PPP Guyana as it was in a PNC Guyana. The more things change the more they stay the same.
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell
