A STEADY DIET OF ELECTION-TIME PROMISES

As is their wont during election season, the PPP/C continues to demonstrate an appalling lack of imagination and creativity.  For the fifth consecutive campaign season, the party and its acolytes continue to parrot the same old promises to implement institutions and programmes for the people’s benefit. Arguably, about 90 percent of those promises never see the light of day when the elections are over and the party members re-settle into their cocoons to continue business as usual, devising schemes to rape the treasury for personal gain. Guyanese people are understandably tired of hearing the regurgitated promises for a better education system, for the holding of Local Government Elections, for an improved pension scheme for our senior citizens, for institutions that offer succor to domestically abused women and children. This list of failures (to implement effective social institutions) goes on ad infinitum. Let’s take a step back just three years to the run-up to the 2011 elections.  Then PPP/C General Secretary Donald Ramotar made this statement: “Development for us is an all-encompassing process, and while over the years significant progress has been made in deepening and entrenching an inclusive constitutional democracy, the PPP/C remains open to working with all stakeholders, including political parties, civil society and labour.” What inclusive democracy?  The PPP has spent an inordinate amount of time and resources discrediting the value of private enterprise and injecting itself into the business arena to compete for revenue with entrepreneurs in the media, agriculture, building and construction.  They embarked over a decade ago on a dedicated programme to retard the well established trade unions, showing preference for the unions affiliated with their FITUG pro-government movement. The PPP, originally dubbed the ‘Working Class’ party, has robbed public sector workers of years of earnings by unilaterally handing out 5 percent increases every year that are: 1) out of step with the rise of inflation; 2) a deliberate strategy to castrate the unions which continuously beg for the chance to negotiate on those workers’ behalf; 3) returned to the government’s coffers in the form of taxes; and 4) inadequate to meet the expanding needs of our workers with families and growing children to feed and clothe and educate. This constant promise of theirs to work with stakeholders is nothing but empty words. Producers of forest products – both raw timber and processed woods – had to establish tenuous partnerships with the likes of Bai Shan Lin (China) and Vaitarna (India) in order to earn revenue from their forest concessions. Too many of the indigenous peoples living in or near to the forest concessions in the hinterland have lost control over large swathes of their titled land which the government awarded to the aforementioned investors and a few others for timber harvesting, gold and diamond mining.  The true owners of the parcels of land in dispute cannot harvest timber and other products from the land.  Their food supply is dwindling because the miners and loggers hunt for the same food. These people are stakeholders, very valuable ones who are experiencing strange water- and mosquito-borne ailments, because little or no operating or environmental standards and controls have been applied to the hinterland business ventures. The people’s social problems are mounting.  Their young ones are hardly educated since the parents could ill afford to send them to schools that are miles away.  Since their accustomed revenue stream has been cut off, the Village Councils are forced to allow teenagers to work on nearby mining dredges, the same ones that pollute their waterways with dangerous chemicals and human waste.  And just as there are no schools, there are no medical facilities sufficiently equipped to treat the rising incidence of malaria, typhoid, chikungunya, gastroenteritis and other paediatric and adult diseases. This is an extremely high price to pay for a near criminal absence of consultation with stakeholders. It is no longer ironic, neither is it strange that just following the 2011 elections, after all the promises to “create opportunities for all Guyanese”, the state launched an attack on the bauxite mining town of Linden (just another in the long string of poorly treated depressed communities).   In his inaugural address in December 2011, President Ramotar spoke of the “exciting task” of providing those opportunities.  In March 2012, just 3 months later, he imposed a huge increase on electricity tariffs, without stakeholder consultation, on a community where 70 percent of the people are unemployed or severely under-employed due to a debilitating absence of employment opportunities.  The people, their Regional leaders and the parliamentary opposition repeatedly called on the President to meet with them to hear first-hand about their economic problems and to offer alternative solutions, but he refused.  The fallout from the Linden fiasco is now common knowledge – three dead and the town that was prosperous in the 1980’s continues to wallow in despair. REDUCE VAT AND OTHER TAXES   This promise was trumpeted throughout the 2011 campaign and ended with a false start.  In December 2011, soon after his inauguration, Ramotar disclosed the names of three people to comprise a special panel to review the tax regime and examine options to transform it into one that is more ‘family friendly’, i.e. one that would include conditional tax relief on personal income.  This panel was also expected to identify strategies to address the conditions of the poor and disadvantaged.   The public has not yet been informed of the outcome of this review, i.e. if it did indeed take place. There is ample reason to question the government’s commitment to this review of the tax regime.  The President on several occasions had stated rather pointedly that in his opinion, the VAT was not a burden on consumers and that he would work to erase this ‘misconception’.  His intention, he said, was to broaden the tax net to capture the ‘big professionals who hardly pay any taxes’.  Three years have since elapsed and the onerous 16% VAT on almost every consumable item continues to keep the ordinary Guyanese man and woman living on or below the poverty line. LOCAL GOVERNMENT ELECTIONS It is now 20 years since our people were last able to choose their own community leaders, select the people who were familiar with their circumstances and who would be able to represent them at the national level.  The PPP/C’s 2011 Election Manifesto stated: “In the area of local government and governance, the next PPP/C government will ensure, within one year of the 2011 general elections, that local government elections are held bringing much-needed reinvigoration into local government entities.” This is just another in the long list of empty elections promises.  Since 1997 after the passing of the party’s leader and while the PPP/C enjoyed a house majority, they repeatedly passed amendments (over 12 consecutive years) deferring the holding of Local Government Elections (LGE).  The excuse was that the Local Government system needed to be reformed.  They have continuously demonstrated a marked unwillingness to introduce the Local Government reform that they touted as their reason for deferring the LGE.  Outside of parliament the President repeatedly told the populace that he was yet to decide when he would issue the order to GECOM to prepare for LGE.  In the meantime, the PPP set about installing hand-picked Interim Committees made up of party faithful who barefacedly usurped the functions of elected neighbourhood council officials. While they were posturing, the Chairman of GECOM informed the nation several times that the Commission was ready even for snap elections. “Anyone who asks me if I am ready for local government elections does not understand the process,” he was reported to have said. The idiocy and delay tactics were taken to a new low in 2014 when Local Government Minister, Norman Whittaker, declared that voters were not ready for local polls. The pundits would call this prevarication and rank deception. So here’s the conundrum.  The PPP/C proclaimed in its 2011 manifesto that reinvigorating local government by holding elections is a “necessary part of development”.  Over the next three years they have used every excuse to postpone Local Government Elections while accusing the opposition of being anti-development! One prominent member of the APNU+AFC Alliance had this to say: “I have truly searched for something complimentary to say about this period (2011–2015), but all I could find is controversy and conflict.  In a country where most of the people would be classified as poor, the Ramotar government celebrates things and calibrates its development based on big buildings, poorly conceived roads and brand name hotels rather than human development. “The level of unemployment in this country is unsustainable; the under-education of our children and the school dropout rate nationally is unsustainable; the crime situation and the lawlessness of our law enforcement agencies is unsustainable, yet this President has failed to lead on all of these important issues facing our nation.  Even if one graded on a curve it would be difficult to give this President anything but a failing grade”. (To be continued)