Dear Editor,
One month ago, the Ali–Jagdeo Government took office, 5 months after a sustained attempt by the APNU+AFC Coalition to steal the March 2 elections, followed by a series of court actions costing tens of millions of dollars. Perhaps it is not too early to offer a commentary on the new Government.
In the first days of the new administration, it proceeded to appoint Ministers – about 23 of them – not including the all-important Minister of Finance. It also established its own COVID Task Force headed by the new Prime Minister, replacing the one headed by the APNU Prime Minister.
The large number of Ministers is clearly a case of rewarding party comrades and activists, many of whom are not qualified, skilled, educated, experienced or have the proven competence and skillsets to be a Minister. Some Ministries have, to begin with, two Ministers, a Permanent Secretary, an Advisor, technical staff such as a Chief Education Officer or a Chief Medical Officer plus a parallel agency like CH&PA dealing with Housing, GWI dealing with water etc. The Foreign Affairs Ministry boasts a Foreign Minister, a Foreign Secretary, a former Foreign Secretary, advisor to the Ministry, a Permanent Secretary plus a Director General.
This is an expensive political bureaucracy that the taxpayers will have to carry, in addition to the public service bureaucracy, Army, Police, Militia, SOCU, FIU, CANU etc plus the Foreign Service personnel stationed abroad. On top of this burden, Parliamentary Secretaries, Chief Whip and many more still have to be appointed.
This is all a continuation of the nonsense that Granger did. Also, don’t forget the big salaries, fat cats like Enrico got. It will be interesting to see what the Ali/Jagdeo Govern-ment is paying their fat cats. As a general principle, except in very special circumstances, no one should receive a salary and allowance in excess of those paid to a Permanent Secretary. And in the interest of both transparency and accountability, those salaries and allowances should be published.
The new Government came to power in the midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic and was forced to deal with it. Fortunately, some aid which was deliberately held up during Granger’s refusal to accept the results of the election was released and was received within days. Granger and his group did not deal adequately with the crisis because first of all its efforts were spent on rigging and attempting to stay in office and secondly the resources, human and physical were not available to deal with it.
A Task Force was set up headed by the outgoing Prime Minister – a Lawyer by profession with some others in military and police uniform but no serious medical and scientific personnel.
The outgoing Minister was of no use. As expected, the PPP Task Force was headed by the incoming Prime Minister – a military officer by training together with some others, the rationale for whose presence was problematic except for the new Minister of Health – a medical and public health specialist and the Chief Medical Officer who together should have been put in charge.
Why a lawyer would be of any help or a retired military officer to give leadership in a situation like this seems quite irrational. But Granger did it so you can continue.
An interesting observation of President Ali at this time concerned borrowing US$12 million to help in the crisis. No one knows how this was arrived at but suffice it to say that all our friends from the ABC+EU delegation have not stepped up to the plate to give us free humanitarian aid, as India did. The ABC+EU were very concerned about the health of our democracy and showed it every day but when the time came to consider the health of the Guyanese people they were silent.
The real big news on COVID dealt with the so-called COVID hospital – an extremely corrupt and unlawful enterprise. Billions spent redoing an abandoned hotel which is being “rented” then acquired in the public interest all the while enriching selected “contractors” at the end which there is no more than a shell is unsuitable to help in the fight against COVID.
In the very first days of the Jagdeo–Ali administration Mr. Jagdeo announced that the Amaila Hydro Project was back on his agenda. Essentially this is a US$800M loan deal to produce about 160 megawatts of power on the Kuribrong River where water inadequacy has been extensively reported. This is an utterly incomprehensible and wasteful project that should not be revived. No one can rule out that a project of this size would not attract corruption parties – big and small besides contributing to a massive increase in this external debt which cannot be served by the project itself but it can only by the treasury and oil proceeds.
The proponents of this monstrosity should publish the financial projections of this travesty so that independent analysts may have an opportunity to review and contest the assumption and hopefully its proponents could offer their defense. This is what transparency is all about.
Similarly the financial and economic projections on the opening of the closed sugar estates need to be published for general analysis. President Ali’s Government seems determined to re-open the estates which Mr. Granger closed in an apparent effort to destroy the industry and the livelihoods of thousands of workers without providing alternatives and even refused to pay them as required by law. It is true that a reduction in the number of estates and consequently in the production of sugar did lead to a reduction in the monthly billion-dollar payout to GuySuCo by the previous PPP administration.
It did become necessary to deal with these massive and persistent subsidies but Mr. Granger went about it the wrong way showing zero empathy for the affected workers. Given an opportunity Dr. Jagdeo’s Government would have no difficulty repeating the same nonsense i.e. making financial and economic decisions on GuySuCo based essentially on political considerations exclusively. Jagdeo’s Skeldon plan was a complete disaster and the nation is stuck with a massive US$200 million cost and debt for a white elephant.
Of course, GAWU – a main factor in PPP politics would be happy to have all the workers back as dues-paying members. That union believes that the people in the communities surrounding the estates should continue as “cane cutters” the same way their foreparents did since 1838 May and if possible their children and grandchildren should continue cutting cane, loading it on their heads and delivering the loads to the punts for another 180 years. GAWU has a very poor idea of what people are capable of. There are many developmental alternatives for those affected communities but don’t expect Mr. Jagdeo to examine them.
However, the bottom line demand remains the publication of the details of the plans and cost to the taxpayers of such “reopening” and whose input might help to determine whether and how many estates it is possible to “save” at an economic cost.
President Ali’s Government came to power months after Guyana became an oil producing state with ExxonMobil’s subsidiary Esso Exploration, NEXEN and its partners HESS of US and CNOOC/NEXEN of China starting production.
The first Exxon Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) was signed in 1999 by President Janet Jagan followed by a second one 17 years later signed by APNU+AFC Minister Trotman. The 1999 deal was a secret deal and came to light 18 years late (r). For the casual reader an important difference is the increase in royalty payable to Guyana from a measly 1% to a measly 2%. But there are other significant changes. The present contract suffers from a variety of deficiencies including its legal nature and a universally recognised one of unfairness to Guyana bordering on serious exploitation of a country’s resources resembling a rip off.
This debate still rages as there have been strong calls for a renegotiation or review of the deal. Vice President Jagdeo who appears to be the de facto Minister of Oil and Gas in addition to his other de facto positions is caught between a rock and a hard place, Exxon having previously reported pre- election that both the PNC and PPP had given assurances to maintain the PSA in its present form.
The fact of the matter is that the PPP owes the US Embassy a favour for its help in pushing out Granger and company through sanctions and Exxon is pushing for the Payara permit without having satisfied all the legal environmental requirements. Partly as a result of an unrelenting campaign by a section of the media plus others, Guyanese public opinion appears to be shifting and tending towards the realization that Exxon is here to rip off Guyana.
That is why the news about Dr. Adams is disconcerting and the Government must clarify same lest it be interpreted that it is taking orders from Exxon to get rid of Adams. There is need for greater transparency in all of the issues surrounding Exxon including the rationale for selecting the local content committee, the spending of the US$18M “signing bonus” and the review of the review of Payara to be done by the Canadian lawyer and her group.
To sum up, in the first month the Government has made a small start to deal with critical issues. Much more should have been done. Much more needs to be done.
Yours faithfully,
Ramon Gaskin
