Dear Editor,
Everyone within Guyana and many without would have heard the booming allegations of huge, widespread, deep corruption of hundreds of billions of dollars, against our PPP/C Administration of the last 23 years. There have been calls for and offers of international assistance to trace those billions of dollars of illegally spent money.
To this I say, let’s get on with those forensic audits as thoroughly, as widely, as deeply and as quickly as could be. Let us welcome and encourage all assistance from bilaterals and multilaterals so that we could have expert and experienced as well as honest and fair audits, as early as possible; for we cannot move forward until those allegations are cleared one way or another.
And I do not have blinkers on. I make no claim that we are angels all, in the PPP and PPP/C; nor do I hold out that any of us is an angel all the time; that we, members all of this society have never succumbed to the pressures and temptations in our society. I say as our President Ramotar said, the reports of corruption have been grossly exaggerated; and I say further, much of these allegations have arisen from misunderstandings and wrong expectations of many and the distorted presentations of others who know better.
There could be no moving forward on the issues dear to us all – national cohesion and some form of and sense of shared governance, until those allegations have been determined. Quite likely you share the concerns about the new, ‘fish-market’ lows remarked upon, to which our Honourable Members descended in the recently concluded budget debate. I doubt that it could have been otherwise, with all those allegations in the air.
Let me confess that I was so hurt during the elections campaign by all the false allegations and abuse hurled against us, and the grotesque distortions of so much that we had worked at for people and country, that I found myself angered beyond recognition. Let me further confess that during considerations about when we, PPP/C, should enter Parliament, my expressed inclination was that we should enter Parliament as soon as the forensic audits would have been completed and declared, but not before. Better judgement and the arguments for participation in our national budget review prevailed.
Regrettably, our last elections evolved into too much of a matter of life and death. There was a letter to the Editor on which I had reflected, with the headline, ‘Why don’t the PPP/C just stand down? Presumably, after twenty three years in Office, there were some sentiments, ‘why doesn’t the PPP/C not declare its innings and take to the field and let the other side have a chance to bat, showing what they could do?’ Perhaps the abuse we felt obliged to hurl at each other has taken away, even if only temporarily, our right to criticise such an argument.
As much as we wished we could, the flow of abuse could not be turned off just so, on a declaration of the results of the Election. I particularly regretted the vehemence of the new, young Honourable Member from Region 10, in his charges of marginalisation and discrimination against us PPP/C, when clearly Linden/Region 10 shared equitably in what we had. No doubt he was presenting as he thought he should, but I wondered whether his presentation with all that vehemence and ignoring hard, visible facts, was any less an exercise in racial consolidation than any with which we of the PPP/C have been charged.
Let’s get on with those forensic audits, get them done and out of the way so that we can get back to focusing on growth and development, national cohesion and the practice and a sense of shared governance. Blind faith and hope kept us of the PPP and later the PPP/C going, since that split of 1955 through 1964 to 1992, and through what was unleashed on us in the run up to and after our 1997 elections. Recall too, that reflecting on and taking opportunity of the close returns of the three parties which contested the 1994 Local Government Elections, for the City of Georgetown, we proposed and participated in a trial of ‘shared governance,’ in a rotating Mayorship of Georgetown. That trial was collapsed when our turn came.
And recall too, much more recently, in talks during Budget 2012, our PPP/C administration conceded and implemented a larger increase in old age pension but the leaders of the then Opposition abandoned the subsequent agreement to initiate a multiyear phased reform of the electricity supply in Linden.
And there was on the table a further step to engage the then Opposition in the allocation of about one third of the revenue from VAT. We were but one step away from a real sharing in governance.
Let us have conditions conducive for national cohesion and a sense of shared governance.
We of the PPP and the PPP/C have been and will continue seeking national cohesion and the practice and a sense of shared governance. We have too much invested, more than any other. But our country cannot go forward now with those serious allegations hanging in the air.
These allegations cannot just be dropped or forgotten; they must be determined then removed from the table. Until then, I fear all our meetings would be but a continuation of what we had in our budget debate in Parliament.
Yours faithfully,
Samuel A.A. Hinds
Former Prime Minister and Former President of Guyana
