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Opposition politics can never be about who is right and who is wrong. There has been so much said by both sides of the political divide that people are often left to wonder about what the truth is. Fortunately, there are often records, the most basic of which can be found in the newspapers. Every time a new government accedes to office in Guyana the new government sets out to fault just about everything that its predecessor did. One common contention was that the replaced government left an empty treasury.
But almost immediately, the new government is able to execute contracts, travel overseas and even pay increased wages and salaries to those sectors that appear to support the new government.
One case in point was the ability of the new government to pay the sugar workers more money in lieu of severance. These workers had already been paid their severance. Such was the case that when the new government went to parliament there were Ministers who were unaware that severance payments were made. Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo had gone so far as to say that the sugar workers were sent home without their severance pay. And his comments went unchallenged by sections of mainstream media. This is just one bit of truth being consigned to the dustbin.
But that is only a small part of the deception. Guyana is in the throes of blackouts. This is strange to people outside the borders. A lot was made of Guyana’s oil discovery in 2015. Suddenly Guyana moved from pariah to most favoured guest among Caribbean countries. Guyanese travelling to the Caribbean, prior to the oil find, were treated harshly. Many were placed on benches in Barbados and simply shipped back on the next available flight.
Trinidad was just as bad. If there was no one to welcome the incoming passenger at the airport, then it was off to the police station for as long as it would take for the person to make the next flight home. And this was after Guyanese had shown their resilience by taking produce in suitcases to the Caribbean. These were the traders who took food to the islands and returned with much needed foreign currency. The islanders knew that Guyana needed foreign currency.
Today, Guyanese hold pride of place. They are supposed to have the fastest growing economy, a growing infrastructure and just about everything that a country would want. But there are the blackouts. That is what people cannot understand. Minister Vickram Bharrat took to the podium to say that the coalition government had spent no money on Guyana Power and Light. This led to equipment collapsing at a time when the country needs even more electricity, he said.
It was an expected speech. But as former Chairman of the Board of Directors of Guyana Power and Light, Rawle Lucas, told a forum, it is difficult to understand how these people could face the public with barefaced lies and expect people to respect them. Rawle Lucas was one of the people who had a mission to make blackouts a thing of the past. He said that one of the first things that the government did was to develop a plan for the period ending 2024.
He said that when he acceded to the Board of Directors, the power situation at Garden of Eden was just beginning to improve. And this was happening after the PPP had spent 23 years in government. He became Chairman in 2019. The coalition immediately set out to fix Garden of Eden. Lucas said that the generators at Garden of Eden were as old as Methuselah. This is the Biblical character who lived to be in excess of 900 years. This power system was beginning to create instability in the power grid.
Immediately, the government set out to introduce 46 megawatts of power by buying the necessary equipment. As fate would have it, when the new government took office, the new equipment was already on the high seas, fully paid for. And this was being done without oil revenue. The roads that are being completed at this time were also planned and designed by the previous government. For a government that did nothing, the PPP is trying to complete projects that it never conceived or started. Not much more has been done since. And without oil money the coalition did its best to keep the resources in place.
Nurses, teachers and public servants got pay increases with a promise of more to come. They stayed and worked. Today more than 300 nurses have flown to foreign lands; doctors have gone to work with the private oil company and teachers are leaving in droves. People in rural Guyana say that the health system is on the verge of collapse. The police are hard pressed to cope with the rising crime. Ever since 2020, murders have increased. So too have road fatalities. But that has nothing to do with money. These things are simply due to a disrespect for the government.
Who can explain the preferential treatment being meted out to sugar workers? A sugar factory has been reopened, not for the sugar because the cost of sugar production cannot justify its existence. Rather, it is for the community service; the people who go by the estate with their stalls on pay day, the rum shops in the neighbourhood and the shops that would make some sales. But at what cost to the economy? The nation will know soon enough.
Yet, as Enrico Woolford would say, despite our hardships, we the Guyanese people, can laugh. A man calls some people trench crapaud and jagabats. They become annoyed and immediately move to the courts. They wasted the court’s time. The matter was thrown out. So what can be expected? The man continues to call them trench crapaud and jagabats with greater frequency. A former Mayor goes to the court because man called her a false name. That matter, too, has been consigned to the rubbish heap. I bet that the man is going to keep calling her whatever name he called her in the first place.
