Hughes welcomes U.S Gov’t comments about matters in Guyana- calls for equity and fair distribution of resources

The visit to the United States (U.S) by a high-level delegation, headed by President Irfaan Ali, continues to reverberate not merely for the trip but for how it was organised and what high-ranking members of the U.S government communicated. The messages delivered to the Government of Guyana from both U.S Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Blinken addressed issues of inclusivity, shared prosperity and transparency. In local parlance these issues, as addressed the U.S, deal with discrimination, all benefitting from the national resources, and improvement on governance.  Member of Parliament (MP) and Chairman of the Alliance For Change (AFC), Mrs. Cathy Hughes, responding to comments by U.S officials said many have been very familiar with them for a very long time.

According to the MP, the U.S officials by their statements, which are in the best diplomatic language, indicated that all is not well in Guyana and more particularly that there are deep problems with the quality, equity and fair distribution of the natural good of the country by the current administration. “For a foreign friendly regional power to identify the schism the domestic affairs of a country is a strong indication of the extent to which there are deep rooted problems about the fair distribution of the natural resources of this country.”

President Ali has sought to communicate to Guyanese his government was invited by the U.S. and engagement between the two were as equals. There is, however, another view by large sections in society that the President was summoned not as an equal with the U.S but with the U.S in the role of advisory/big brother.

International relations experts, speaking with Village Voice, said never before has there been such engagement with Guyana, not even in the Cold War era when Guyana was a leading member in the Non-Aligned Movement. Another said, no other country in the Caribbean has had this dressing down or level of scolding as Ali received. Their advice to the President is to seriously review his trip and conversations, both with Harris and Blinken, and resist local partisan political temptation to deflect to bluster.

One expert said, were he a member of Ali advisory team he would have told him:-the earlier he detaches from Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo the better it will be for his presidency, particularly given the explosive reports from U.S-based VICE News. In those reports Jagdeo has been named and singled out as a major player in a corrupt and money laundering scheme between Chinese businesses and government officials to get lucrative government contracts.

Hughes shared the view, now that the U.S government has pointed to deep rooted problems about fair distribution of the natural resources, apart from the fact that it is a condemnation of the current administration, it indicates that there is an urgent and pressing need for review of the governance systems in the country. The Chairman is therefore calling for the restructuring of the distribution of the resources of Guyana, particularly the oil and gas resources. According to her, there is need to specifically re-examine all existing contractual arrangements and allocations made in the last two years to identify where there have been disproportionate benefits conferred on some parts of our society and put in place plans to redress future imbalances.