Warning !!! Government prepares to snatch the City

Intention to manipulate the covenant (IMC)

(Freddie Kissoon writes)

In Guyana, quite unlike our sister Caribbean countries, the government of the day plays constituency politics.

In Jamaica, if they have to architecture a botanic garden in honour of Usain Bolt, the location is going to be based on aesthetic determinants, not demographic politics. They are going to do something that will enhance Jamaica. The same principle applies to Barbados.

In Guyana, any and every policy has a political derivative. If we are going to design a monument to civilisation, it will be placed where political supporters are. My firm belief is that the location of the Berbice Bridge was done with political points in mind. Why assign New Amsterdam the facility? After all that is not where our people are found.

The world is not leaving us behind - the world has left us behind. We will continue to journey towards nihilism and dissolution because the exercise of power contemptuously dismisses the integrity of administrative science, technology and science in general. The sarcoma that has devoured the fabric of this society is the automatic choice of party person over a great scientist for a job that the country depends on.

The most poisonous substance that has asphyxiated this nation is the insane rush to put politics before common sense. This is a country where commonsense in the process of governance does not obtain. I see this everywhere.

Take the migration of skilled people. Twice President Jagdeo admitted that this is a huge problem. The day before Carifesta at a press conference, he spoke of the difficulty of the Ministry of Works to secure engineers. Last week, at another press meeting, he announced that the new Skeldon sugar factor is hit by shortage of relevant skills.

All categories of workers are leaving. Barbados wants joiners and carpenters. Basic elementary human thinking would force any sane government to invent a blueprint for retention of the educated class.

How this government cannot see the wisdom of such thinking makes them ineligible to run a fish stand in the market. We retire teachers at 55. Guyana is one of the least occupied countries in the world in terms of population density.

Yet there isn’t a beautiful teachers’ housing scheme. Indeed, the world has turned its back on this Faustian hell called Guyana run by Anthony Burgess’s Clockwork Orange misfits.
Honest, decent businessmen who have made this country their home and have their children growing up here had to face tremendous losses in the Great Flood of 2005. They endured hardship again in 2006. They were inundated in December 2008 because of the sarcoma referred to above.

The city was flooded not because of the non-existent unusual rainfall. The deluge occurred because the water had no exit. The gutters, drains, alleyways and canals were turned into mountains of mud because they were not cleaned.

The Office of the President chose not to finance that project before the rainy season because the PPP is not in charge of the City Council.

Good news has arrived! There will soon be an Interim Management Committee (IMC). Whether we like it or not, City Council has to go because there is no money to run the show. However, there will be another IMC – intention to manipulate the covenant.

The chairman will not be an independent person. His team will not be drawn from the independent sectors of civil society.

A non-PPP businessman will be chosen to head the IMC. But the subtleties of politics will play out on a Bismarckian chess board.

He will not come from the Office of the President, but he knows that he will have to respond to the telephone calls from New Garden Street. He is no fool. He knows he is an importer and his goods have to be cleared on the wharves. He knows it would be foolish to appear to be independent of the powers that be.

While he keeps an eye on the people that can ruin his business if he doesn’t listen to them, his team will be doing everything to make sure they grab the limelight because the election countdown will begin in 2009.

As the IMC is paraded on NCN, in the Chronicle and in the Guyana Times, the sarcoma will be at work, feasting on the flesh of a tragic nation.