…rampant with PNC
Old people say, “Once dog suck egg, deh cyan stap!” It’s too sweet, never mind it’s someone else’s egg!! And in their first incarnation, the PNC sucked the “eggs” of the public purse so voraciously that one wondered why their supporters took them seriously when they made “egg sucking” their major attack against the PPP.
We now know they were merely projecting their own fantasies about getting their grubby (not-so-little) paws on the treasury! Every single case of corruption they brought against PPP officials /associates has been thrown out!! The British advisor to SOCU – who proved he KNEW a thing or two about corruption! – just advised them to forget about ever proving anything against PPP. Instead, they should focus on current corruption!!
And we don’t have to take his word about the current rampant corruption in this PNC government. The IDB recently issued a report referencing a study they conducted, which rated Guyana as the most corrupt Government in the Caribbean – when it comes to public servants sticking their hands out for bribes! Could it be that the excuse Harmon gave for Ministers getting a 50% salary increase immediately upon taking office – to discourage them from stealing! – pissed them off? After all, they were promised “substantial” raises during the last PNC elections campaign, but instead got “wood”!! So now they’re filling their pockets even faster?
But the PNC are just too barefaced! After all, the Jubilee Park they created in 2016 to celebrate our Golden Jubilee had been so mired in corruption that you’d think they’d stay away from that location as far as possible in this elections period, wouldn’t you? There was the private company, HDI, registered AFTER a bunch of Ministry of the Presidency insiders started collecting funds – more than G$500 million – from private businesses to build a stadium. Remember them? They included one ex-GDF officer, Larry London, and the fella who brokered the WPA deal with the PNC to form APNU – Rupert Roopnaraine. Remember him?
May 26 was dawning, but the stadium was nowhere to be seen, so Granger called in the MoPI under Patterson to use the Army corps of engineers to finish the structure for the big bash. Another billion or so had been spent. And imagine, Granger chose the exact corruption-ridden structure to launch his re-election campaign!! After spending god-knows-how-much-more to re-asphalt it!!
But in case the PNC faithful thought others had forgotten the monument to PNC corruption – some fairy godmother (?) released the last Auditor General Report.
Not only can Rupert’s HDI not account for the half-billion they collected, we’re told that Patterson’s bunch can’t account for another half-billion from their G$1 billion spent!!
But old dogs just gotta suck eggs, no?
…and campaigning
There’s a hot debate raging in the blogsphere about the propriety – if not the legality – of PNC supporters blocking PPP vehicles campaigning – and even hurling objects at them – in their neighbourhoods. One school feels that this is no big deal; partisans will be partisans! One well-schooled university lecturer compared it to the shouting and walk-out by PPP partisans at the Pegasus Lunch.
But is it really? Those PPP activists didn’t actually throw objects at Granger, who’d by then struck his “unbothered” pose, had they?? The thing is, you see, the PNC can’t have it both ways. With the tragic fate suffered by Crum-Ewing when he was campaigning for them in a PPP dominated area, don’t they see the enforcers of our law have to draw a very firm line against molesting campaigners from the “other” side??
Last Saturday, it was sticks and stones. Luckily, no one was hurt. Guyana’s too volatile at this time to take chances.
Chaos beckons!!
…and Granger
The PNC and myrmidons are banking on Granger’s “clean” image in this campaign. Notice all the posters in front of their stage trumpeting his “honesty and integrity”?
Welll, how honest or upright is he when he’s allowed corruption to run so rampant? There are sins of omission and sins of commission!!