This piece from Ryhaan Shah suggests that we are heading back to the dark days of the 1970-80S.
Guyana will not forget
August 14, 2016 By Editor
By Ryhaan Shah
After all the accusations levelled at the PPP/C Administration about its alleged corruptions, the David Granger Government has, in no more than a year, racked up an impressive number of shady deals, financial wastage and displays of arrogance.
The National Assembly sitting this past week uncovered a few more. We learned that Government wasted over $406 million from the Contingency Fund on one of President David Granger’s pet projects for which there was no public consultation, namely the D’Urban Park Development Project. This was the centrepiece for what turned out to be a PNC/Afro-Guyanese Golden Jubilee celebration which was completely forgettable for its mediocrity, confusion, and its less-than-gala dinner.
But it was the line item of $25 million also spent from the Contingency Fund in July for a security deposit on a building that caught the Opposition’s eye and started a line of questioning that unravelled a scandalous corruption with Health Minister George Norton at its centre.
It appeared that way until it was disclosed Norton was simply following directives from Cabinet. This only heightens the fiasco and places Government itself at the centre of the sole-sourcing and financial corruptions involving the deal that was made with a company named Linden Holding Inc, a bottom-house outfit in Sussex Street, Charlestown, which is undergoing renovations to make it suitable as a drugs storage unit.
For this unfinished facility, Government is already paying out more than a $1000 per square foot rental which is over three times the New GPC’s rates for its state-of-the-art and fully certified drugs storage facility. Government’s decision to forgo the arrangement with the New GPC appears to be driven more by a refusal to work with anyone affiliated with the previous Administration than by good business sense and a concern for the nation’s welfare, especially since it is essential that medical drugs and supplies are always stored in well monitored and secured facilities.
Also dogging Norton’s heels is his interference in the management of the Georgetown Public Hospital where the board has reinstated CEO Michael Khan after a government audit cleared him of any wrongdoing.
In overturning the board’s decision, Norton contravenes the Public Corporation Act which places the responsibility for the appointment of the hospital’s CEO within the board’s remit.
Staffing and other issues at the GPHC continue to make headlines and, for the sake of the nation’s health, the CEO is needed back at his desk where he will remain with the board’s support. On this issue, Government seems more interested in saving face than in doing what is right and just.
Amidst all the reports of corruption over the past week, the most worrying of all was the ongoing attempt by government’s main coalition partner, the PNC, to rewrite Guyana’s history according to their playbook. Letters writers to the press have started to correct the untruths being peddled about Burnham and show him for the brutal, corrupt and racist dictator that he was.
No progressive nation is ever built on a body of lies and Granger and the PNC should be embarrassed by their revisionist statements about their party’s past. Except that they are not. Their arrogance is well learned from their founder/leader Burnham.
Social cohesion – of which Burnham is now hailed as the author – is being pushed down the public’s throat even as the Granger Government engages in some of the most blatant acts of prejudice. It’s Burnham’s way, that kind of haughtiness.
Those who ignored the clear warning issued by the coalition during its elections campaign to forget the past are beginning to understand why the past matters. It matters because those who forget are bound to repeat it.
Thus far, there seems no danger that Guyana will forget.
Whereas Burnham muzzled the press and dictated everything that was disseminated by his state media, Guyana still has a free press and this past week even the usual sycophants reported fully on Government’s latest crop of corruptions.
One such report was that the project to widen Carifesta Avenue has been abandoned. Granger, in true Burnham style, held no public consultation on fashioning his vision of a widened avenue with a median lined with light poles that were to be hung with the flags of the Caricom nations.
The vision, costing 180 million taxpayers’ dollars, was to be his showpiece for the Caricom Heads of Government conference last month. Well, the project has been abandoned and the renaming of Carifesta Avenue to the grander Avenue of the Caribbean has been abandoned along with it. Abandoned like so many of Burnham’s visions.
