Dear Editor,
As many of you would know, after more than two decades as a Central Banker, I literally walked out of the Bank’s doors without notice and eventually joined the Private Sector Commission, first as its technical/economic specialist, and for the last eight years of my tenure, as its Executive Director.
The interests of the members of the Commission are therefore imprinted on my brain and, when the so-called Caribbean Private Sector Organisation recently expressed some form of hegemonic control over, not only Guyana’s right to self-determination in the making of her laws, but the inalienable right of Guyanese businesses to benefit from investment in their own country, I, along with the entire local business sector, found that my hackles were standing at full and outraged height.
To learn last evening from a gentle and peaceable soul that one of our own was integrally involved in the creation of this travesty of an organisation, supposedly to replace the CAIC, has been the final straw.
The Caribbean Private Sector Organi-sation has absolutely no right to purport to represent the businesses of the Caribbean and the central question now must be why they were given such status and recognition by the Caribbean Community Secretariat, headquartered in Guyana.
For an organisation to be representative, its structure must follow democratic principles as does that of the Private Sector Commission where each Sectoral Member has a vote that counts. The same could not be said of the misnamed CPSO where voting rights reside primarily in the hands of a few large conglomerates.
This is not democracy. It is the most insidious form of oligarchy and I am very sure the Guyanese business community will not stand for this.
Yours faithfully,
Faye Elizabeth Alleyne
