Dear Editor,
That I supported David Granger and the APNU/AFC coalition in the 2015 elections is a matter of public knowledge. Neither conscience nor logic nor reason allows me to do so again.
As a leader with a nought point one three per cent, and a one-seat majority in a hugely bifurcated society, instead of fostering national healing and reconciliation, Granger has been more divisive than disappointing. Instead of policies and strategies to bring the communities closer, he, his Government and several high-level appointees have shown, at best, an insensitivity to ethnic concerns and at worst, a tendency towards narrow ethnocentric policies. For a still poor country, the pattern of public spending during the period and accentuated in this campaign season, is nothing short of reckless. Where competence is required, he has preferred loyalty. While laying claim to integrity and decency, he has shown that he is as willing to engage in cheap posturing and politics as the most opportunistic politician around. Most of all, Granger has shown contempt for and continues to display arrogance and superiority for the country’s Constitution and the rule of law.
His grand vision has been breakfast, bicycles, boats and buses, the sort of things you leave to local authorities, or a reasonably funded charity. He has no problem with his picture on flags financed by unaccounted and possibly tainted money, taking up public space, abuse of State resources to campaign for re-election on a platform of integrity, taking the bully’s position when the courts rule against him, and breaking written promises and pledges.
His Administration has retained all the Afro Guyanese Permanent Secretaries inherited from its predecessor while removing almost all the rest. The result is that Indo-Guyanese are barely represented among PS’s and in the public service as a whole. Of the scores of senior positions in the State sector, less than ten per cent of the most senior positions represent the other community. Granger personally relieved two prominent active persons – Cecil Kennard and Prem Persaud – because of age while unconstitutionally/unlawfully appointing two individuals – James Patterson and Professor Clive Thomas – with even more pronounced characteristics. The professional and business class of Guyana can fend for themselves but the treatment of sugar workers has been nothing short of cruel and inhumane.
Taking advantage of the media’s softness and silence, Granger’s Government has shown a stubborn refusal to disclose the full details of a number of projects including the D’Urban Park project, the Sussex Street drug storage facility, the Mazaruni Prison reconstruction, contracts without proper approval and money for politicians, their family, friends and supporters.
For all the taxes his Administration has raised and tons of money spent, Granger’s five years in power has revealed a man of poor judgment, weak leadership and low achievement. He did show cunning on his belittling of the AFC whose greed for power guaranteed that nothing could cause them raising off their knees. And in his appeasing of the WPA, which, for years, grumbled about bad faith and breach of trust. Having broken the promise of free collective bargaining in the public service, stood aloof of the struggle between an oppressive foreign employer and its employees, and ignored the labour movement as a whole, he has managed to have the President of the TUC on his party list – unprecedented in Guyana.
Mr Granger now singlehandedly appeals to the same electorate to ignore his grave violations of the law and several broken promises because this time his promises represent a sacred contract. Having failed them in the past, he seeks to entice them in the present. Granger now talks up the agriculture and gold-mining sectors as shining stars while not too long ago, he listed them among curses. Having thrown thousands of sugar workers to the ranks of the unemployed and the desperate, his Administration scurries to distribute sugar lands to his friends for peanuts. He and his party now fly to visit the hinterland appealing for votes from the Indigenous people who were described by his party functionaries as “greedy”.
Mr Granger shares a special relationship with Raphael Trotman, the man directly responsible for the biggest giveaway this country has ever seen and who is now Co-Chairman of Granger’s re-election campaign. He appointed the largest Government in the history of this country which just happens to be the most incompetent. Think of former Attorneys General such as Burnham himself, Ramsahoye, Ramphal, Shahabudeen, Fred Wills and Keith Massiah and the contrast with the incumbent is clear. As Ministers of Finance, think of Peter D’Aguiar, Ptolemy Reid, Frank Hope, Desmond Hoyte, Bharrat Jagdeo and Ashni Singh: again the contrast is striking. Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo has been largely a sinecure and warrants no comparison while Khemraj Ramjattan, whose portfolio has been halved, has performed several times as bad as even his more ordinary counterparts, let alone Fenton Ramsahoye, Ptolemy Reid, Desmond Hoyte and Stanley Moore.
Granger cannot be blamed for the incompetence of others. But he cannot escape responsibility for appointing and retaining what is at best mediocrity. A measure of the low rating which Granger places on the national interest is his appointment of a single unsuitably qualified person to head the petroleum sector instead of pursuing the Petroleum Commission which his Government tabled and then allowed to die with the dissolution of Parliament.
But Granger’s greatest danger is his contempt for the Constitution and our laws, with threats of more to come. There has been no Judicial Services Commission or fully constituted Procurement Commission for some time, while many of other constitutional bodies were appointed inordinately late. He unconstitutionally appointed James Patterson to head GECOM and never relented until the CCJ forced him to; he defied the National Assembly’s No-Confidence Motion – not because he believed that the majority of 65 is 34 but because as he told his supporters “they elected him for five years and he would be President for five years”. And now he threatens to remove the National Assembly’s power to have a motion of no-confidence, and warns people of his constitutional power to strip them of their citizenship.
The recitation of all the above, which is only part of the story, leaves one to wonder whether he as President will ensure free and fair elections, elections that are free from fear and intimidation, and whether he will obey the will of the electorate. There is no evidence for me to have those same fears about the other parties contesting these elections. I am as fearful in 2020 as I was hopeful in 2015.
Sincerely,
Christopher Ram