Can’t please everyone…

Alarmists

Back in 1990, the PNC government privatised the local telephone company. It was one of forty corporations the dictatorship had on the block even though it was a lame-duck administration. Elections, scheduled for that year had deferred to 1992 because of a padded voters’ list. Most of these corporations were practically given away – with money obviously flowing like rivers under the table. 80 per cent of the Guyana Telecommunications Corporation (GTC), which was earning about US$3 million annually, was sold to the totally unknown ATN of the Virgin Islands for a measly US$16.5 million.

This was a bigger ‘fire sale’ than the clothes from the Jaigobind’s Regent Street fire! It was on the back of GTC – renamed GT&T – that ATN became a communications player. The PPP government had always committed to selling off its 20 per cent stock in the company and introducing competition into the field. Matters intensified after the 20 year monopoly of the company came up for renewal last year. GT& T waged a desperate rearguard action to keep its monopoly.

A couple of weeks ago, the CEO of GT&T Yog Mahadeo launched an unprecedented attack on the government of Guyana. He accused the government of passing on the corporation’s expansion plans into new technology to rivals! He was pretty miffed that the government was launching its own LTE network – even though the government had long announced this initiative for e-governance and educational use.

Now that the government has sold its 20 per cent share so that – among other things – they cannot be accused of peddling ‘inside’ information, the Muckraker KN is up in arms. For what? They don’t know – but it doesn’t matter, does it? Their mission, after all is to oppose and depose the government. The best charge they could muster was that the US$ 5 million (of the US$ 30 million) to be paid in 5 years could come out of dividends. And therefore the shares are being sold for US$25 million! Don’t the dolts realise that even if the US$5 million was paid up front, the US$ 5 million of dividends would have later all been kept by the buyer? It’s “six of one; half-a-dozen of the other”.

Collateral damage?

The carefully orchestrated Opposition ploy to get rid of a Commissioner of Police is working even better than they expected. The CoP, who did not violate his oath of office by conniving with opposition executives to subvert police actions against criminals waging war against the state, is dangling.

The chief justice might now be collateral damage. In rape cases, it is accepted that the complainant’s character from previous actions is irrelevant. So nowhere in the more than 50 pages of Justice Chang’s ruling does he go into her prior character. One would have hoped that all those good burghers – including Minister Manickchand and Deputy Speaker Backer – taking pot shots against the ruling would have extended the same observance of the forms in the specific matter brought before Justice Chang. Many of them, including the two named officers are even lawyers, we are told. All the court was required to pronounce on was whether the DPP’s advocated charge would ‘rationally’ lead to a conviction. And this is what Justice Chang adjudged. Now because of the gutter charges being hurled at the chief justice, we understand he is considering resigning.

We urge him not to give in to political pressures against which the judiciary is the final bulwark. Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? And such guardians!