Shortly after 10 am on December 31, he starts out by attending a party for kids in Enmore
Then at 11 am he attends another party with kids of Hope.
At about 1:30 p.m he proudly swears in Henry Greene as Commissioner with his green and by now sweaty shirt. All in a day's work. Wonder what he plans on wearing this evening.
Alliance For Change Chairman Khemraj Ramjattan says that, for the President to name a bank account he contends contains monies purportedly from the Wildlife Fund, when the Finance Minister tabled a Treasury Memorandum indicating that the records could not be located or reconstructed, is a “quite interesting development”. Ramjattan expressed this opinion in an invited comment yesterday following the adjournment of the National Assembly.
On Saturday last, President Bharrat Jagdeo, during a press briefing at State House, had stated that he was unaware of any financial records being missing, but noted that the money was placed into a non-interest bank account and he had a problem with that.
He also noted that there was some level of corruption at the Office of the President (OP), and several persons had to be fired as a result.
Commenting on the missing financial records for the Wildlife bank account for the period 1998 to 2002, which was at the time operated under the auspices of OP, President Jagdeo said that he was not au fait with all of the details of the issue, but he noted that, in one instance, people were caught taking money and giving permits for the export of animals, “way beyond what our quota allowed.” He added that the money was then placed in a non-interest account at the Bank of Baroda.
Simply put, we are bored as hell, recovering from the reflections on the intricate esplanade of life. In fact, it’s tiring, probably horrifying just slumped back on this hard cold wooden floor staring up at the ceiling wondering what lies ahead. Thinking back, the sensation gives a sudden rush of emphysema. No need to beckon for help, a sudden flashback from the hilarious segment of the cranium is enough to stop a relapse.
IPod, blackberry, laptop, West Indies hanging in – none of the mundane pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of life seems to make sense and probably it is the new environment with the arrival of family from the cold or probably the dejection and frustration was born out of false hope of having pocket change this time of year.
Whatever caused these disastrous emotions must be contagious and contemptuous to rob mankind of the respite he deservingly entreats without hesitation. The frustration and penned-up anger is a bitter-sweet feeling, but the sweetness is monosaccharide, misunderstood.
Thoughts though scrambled at time, remain monolithic as though the sky will pop from above and a sign would be revealed. In life, there are so many signs, buss stops, cross roads and vehicles to take you along the journey that stopping and think sometimes may cost the best ride to success. Whoever said to stop and reflect on life really was misguided. Go head allow the ghosts of your past to haunt at a time and place of your choosing, but never shadow-box with your thoughts alone in the dark.
Be warned!
Barely fumbling for the power button, the laptop bleeps, a flash of light is momentarily blinding, but welcoming nonetheless. A well deserving vacation had been planned months in advance prior to learning that family members feared dead were travelling during the craziest time of the year.
This is by no means farewell from the blogging arena so the disgraced public officials could put away the party hats and dump the cake, Guyana360 will be back in a week. In Guyana360’s absence, Guyana Fire and probably, a few other new contributors will keep the pace. Keep sending those comments.
Guyanese blogs have popped up across the spectrum which runs our lives. With quick scouting a few were added to our Blogger’s World section.
Raptus8 is still confused and actually got a promotion in time for the holidays. Ruel Johnson hints at marriage maybe not in time for the holidays, but soon. And Maria Benschop has gone back to the drawing board after her husband’s release.
All three have been added to the section, in addition to fixing the link to Guyana Providence Stadium, who we hope would use the season of goodwill to forgive us for having the unlinked URL for months, probably years. There are many more Guyanese blogs, hoping to have all linked by the start of the New Year. Send your blog URL to Guyana360.
It was a blogistic year as expected since the predictions were made since January to the folks over at livinguyana.
GINA says Water almost gone from this Beehive, East Coast Demerara home
The People’s National Congress Reform has taken careful note of the increase in activity to attack the PNCR and its leadership, including the call for the resignation of its Leader. The Stabroek News Editorial of Sunday, December 14, 2008 and a letter from Rickford Burke are very much in this vein.
They contain nothing new except that the language of the latter represents an ad hominem attack on Mr. Robert Corbin. The Party has grown accustomed to the rantings of Mr. Burke and is well aware of the political Agenda of Stabroek news. We leave the nation and PNCR supporters, in particular, to judge. What is new is the attack on the PNCR and Mr. Robert Corbin in a letter by Mr. Christopher Ram, which coincidentally appeared in the same issue as the Stabroek News Editorial in question. The PNCR leaves it to the Guyanese people to draw the necessary conclusion.
Mr. Ram is a member of the so-called intellectual elite which has reserved the right to pronounce on the internal matters of the PNCR. There is nothing necessarily wrong with such an attitude but one would have expected that Mr. Ram and the class he represents would be more responsible in carrying out its self assigned duty.
The PNCR is not fooled by such arguments that it should hold the Government more “accountable.” Translated in political terms it means that Mr. Ram and his fellow ideologues would like to see the PNCR take to the streets again where its supporters and members could become the battering ram for him and the less than courageous class that he represents. When the PNCR was in a more militant phase, it was people like Christopher Ram and the Editors of the Stabroek News who accused the Party of being violent and denounced its supporters “thugs” and “hooligans.” Indeed, one can go on to say that the Stabroek News took advantage of those occasions to seriously undermine the efforts of the PNCR to force the PPP/C to respect the laws of Guyana and the rights of the Guyanese people.
It must not be forgotten that it was this very class which urged Mr. Corbin at the inception of his tenure as Leader of the PNCR, to take a different route to effect change in Guyana . Mr. Corbin did not need such advice, but, having regard to the fragile political and economic conditions of the country, he decided along with his Party to exhaust all democratic procedures to persuade the Jagdeo Administration to respond to important issues affecting the Guyanese people. Mr. Ram cannot say that there has been no success.
The PNCR’s campaign against the death/phantom squads and the rule of law marches organised by the PNCR and others, led directly to the resignation of Minister of Home Affairs, Ronald Gajraj. The establishment of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry, while clearly intended to exonerate Ronald Gajraj from any responsibility for activities in relation to the death squads, painted a damning picture of the PPP’s handling of important areas of the security sector and their active collaboration in extra judicial killings and murder. The Roger Khan expose in the USA has confirmed that the PNCR was correct in its approach at that time.
Mr. Ram has also conveniently forgotten that it is the PNCR that led the charge to expose the extra judicial killings by the Target Special squad led by Supt. Fraser and Merai and forced the Jagdeo Administration to establish the Disicplined Forces Commission. For the first time, the Leader of the Opposition was able to appoint members to a Presidential Commission and Ms. Maggie Berne’s report still remains instructive. That Disciplined Forces Commission made significant recommendations for the improvement of the Guyana Police Force and the security sector.
Is the PNCR or the Leader of the Opposition to blame for the Jagdeo Regime’s failure to implement the one hundred and fifty plus recommendations? Where was Mr. Ram’s pen and voice when the PNCR repeated called on the Government to implement those recommendations? The Nation awoke, however, after the Lusignan and Bartica massacres. The same question may be asked of Stabroek News.
Where was Mr. Ram and Stabroek News when the PNCR and its Leader led the way in the disastrous floods of 2005 and 2006? Who was it that exposed the gross mismanagement, discrimination and corruption within the Government Flood Relief program? The PNCR did not only criticize and expose, but vigorously organized its own National Relief efforts and provided support to all communities regardless of race or politics.
The PNCR’s continued Human Services programme of bringing relief to the needy and elderly could not be unknown. So too have been its initiatives at empowering its supporters and its promotion of a vigorous Literacy programme, long before the Government was bold enough to acknowledge that there was a national Literacy crisis. Perhaps, Stabroek News had good reason not to publicise many of these activities. Surely, it would have conflicted with their agenda of promoting a new political party. The facts are however there and cannot be disputed. More particularly, however, the ordinary people, the beneficiaries, and the members of the PNCR are fully aware of these activities. Consequently, the vile propaganda by Mr. Ram and Stabroek news and the rantings of a few disgruntled people will not succeed.
It was also the PNCR’s relentless pressure on the PPP/C to open up the information sector that set the conditions for the historic judgement of Justice Ian Chang. The Party will not waste any further time in reiterating its successes, but merely wishes to remind those who conveniently forget that its firm opposition to torture compelled the Jagdeo Administration and the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) to hold an investigation into allegations made in this regard by many Guyanese citizens, even though the final report produced by the investigation, in the Party’s judgement, was far from satisfactory.
The question of the Value Added Tax (VAT) needs separate treatment. It is only the most purblind of its critics who would deny that it was the PNCR and its Leader, Mr. Robert Corbin, who have pushed this issue to the top of the national agenda. The Party had warned before the 2006 elections of the negative effects of the tax rate set and the dangers if it was poorly implemented. The results are with us today as the cost of living has spiraled.
Despite the warning of the Party, many people voted for the PPP/C in 2006 and it is quite clear that many have regretted that decision. The Jagdeo Administration continues to reap a windfall from this tax while the Guyanese people continue to suffer. Now that many have ignored the advice and leadership of the PNCR and are experiencing the adverse effects of that tax, they expect that the PNCR’s “thugs” and “hooligans” would rescue them from this dilemma. The moral of what has transpired is that a nation gets the Government it deserves. The PNCR would therefore not be persuaded to call on its grassroot supporters to aid those who blatantly ignored and insulted them when they placed their “bellies on the line” for those very classes to benefit. Perhaps the Staborek News and Christopher Ram should take their own advice published in the Editorial of Stabroek News of April 22, 2004 entitled, “Civil society must get involved”:
“ ……. The breakdown of the constructive engagement process is a call to arms that we ignore at our peril. For if we continue to be apathetic about becoming involved in the affairs of our nation we will continue to be prisoners in our homes, waiting for the knock in the night that takes one of our loved ones away to be seen again dead and abandoned in some desolate area of the town or countryside.
If we heed the call we can address Corbin's caution about individuals or organisations pursuing the interest of one or the other political party; we can be assured that in any discussions the interest of the nation would be uppermost in the priorities of the participants. Most of all we will ensure that we could yet bequeath to our heirs a Guyana worthy of their loyalty and dedication and to which their minds can remigrate as they see the prospects for a better life at home than in some far off land. “
There are too many people today who have little understanding of Guyana ’s political history and they therefore tend to rush to shallow judgement without analysis. It is not unknown that parties in opposition tend to encounter difficulties which could lead to the exit of important members. The PNCR is mature enough to accept this fact. Even the newly formed AFC experienced this phenomena when one of its leading founding members, Ms. Gomattie Singh made her exit. Any serious researcher can find evidence of the hemorrhaging of the PPP in the 70’s and beyond when it was in opposition. The PPP lost many important members such as Rahaman Gajraj, Ranji Chandisingh, Halim Majeed, Vincent Teekah and Harry Lall. Are these not people of talent? Were these not representatives of important political capital of that party? Did they not take with them important institutional memory? Indeed, looking at the hemorrhaging of the PPP at that time, one would have also concluded that the Party was weakened beyond repair. The reality is that parties do recover as internal and external circumstances provide the space for them to do so, as the PPP did, and the PNCR will. Perhaps Mr. Christopher Ram a former active member of the WPA is allowing his judgement to be clouded by those experiences and is trying to judge the PNCR in the same light.
It is unproductive to allocate blame for the performance of the PNCR at the last elections. The PNCR’s strategy was carefully outlined at its 2004 Congress when it called for a united opposition and advocated shared governance. The party actively pursued those objectives and those who ignored that initiative did so at their peril. Those who now seek to find excuses for the miserable performance of the Jagdeo Administration and find someone to blame, must therefore engage in serious self evaluation. The PNCR, like any responsible political party, conducted its own evaluation that would guide its future action.
The PNCR is not afraid of criticism. Indeed, the Party welcomes it when it is constructive and intended to help defend the interest of the Guyanese people. Moreover, the PNCR has never claimed that it is a perfect political institution without any weaknesses. The Party expects, however, that those who have elected to become its critics should be careful in assembling their facts. If their assertions do not square with the concrete reality in which the Party finds itself, it will naturally reserve the right to reject those criticisms as ill-informed and tendentious. It is rather ironic that the Stabroek News, which waged a continuous campaign to undermine the PNCR and promote the Alliance for Change (AFC), should now attempt to shed crocodile tears for the PNCR’s perceived demise. It is also laughable that Christopher Ram, who for several years waged a private campaign of vilification of the Leader of the PNCR, should now express concern for an “effective opposition”. All he has done is to seize the opportunity to boldly express what he has been spewing in cocktail circles since 2003. The party will not be deceived by such antics. In such circumstances his motivations are highly suspect.
The PNCR urges its members and supporters to, “be steadfast: In season and out of season”. Many predicted the demise of the PNCR after the death of Forbes Burnham in 1985. Other such predictions were also made after the sudden death of Desmond Hoyte in 2002. It has not happened and by now those prophets of doom should realise that the PNCR is resilient. It will survive the storm and like the phoenix, will rise from the ashes to lead Guyana to sound development.
It is the membership of the PNCR that elected Mr. Corbin to that Office. They re-elected him as Leader at the last Congress and at the Party’s General Council meeting on November 6, last, reaffirmed their confidence in him and the actions taken by the party. Those who claim to embrace the culture of democracy and feel that they have the authority to call for his resignation should understand the contradiction. It is time that they have respect for the views of the membership of the PNCR and not insult their intelligence. Or perhaps those misguided persons exhibit such intellectual arrogance to believe, like some, that, “the masses are asses”.
Finally, it must be understood that there are myriad problems facing this country and it would be fool hardy to expect the PNCR solely to carry the struggle in trying to resolve them. The PNCR has said before and repeats, that the people of Guyana must take ownership of these problems and join it and other responsible elements of the opposition in trying not only to resolve them but in bringing the Jagdeo Administration to sanity. The Party is confident that once the people of Guyana have seized ownership of these problems, the Jagdeo Administration will be more respectful of the laws of Guyana and the interests of the people. WE urge the Stabroek News to take their own advice and perhaps, as a service to all Guyanese re-publish their entire Editorial of April 22, 2004.
People’s National Congress Reform
Congress Place, Sophia
Georgetown, Guyana
Wednesday, 17 December, 2008
Ramlall himself did not speak at the opening ceremony, as he is never one to want to hug the limelight, his longtime friend, Glenn Lall, told the audience.
Lall, publisher of Kaieteur News, said that speculation was rife that he was the developer behind the imposing three-storey structure which is located at Regent and Wellington Streets.
However, he denied this was so, and said the building solely belongs to the Ramall family.
Lall acknowledged that the close involvement of his wife, Bhena, who owns the popular shoe store bearing her name at the eastern end of the same block with Regent Multiplex, might have fuelled that speculation.
Bhena, he said, was responsible for the architectural design of the building and the way it was decorated.
However, while he described the building as a work of art, with ornamental properties, he said it was, nevertheless, functional.
Lall said Ramall has always been willing to come forward to contribute to various funds he has set up to help victims of disaster and man-made terror, and wasn’t one who had to be asked.
Guyana360: Lall is no fool for a man who started life selling in Bourda Market. He so correct that he is not behind the new venture, but not once has he denied that is voluptuous wife is really behind the new store and not West Demerara businessman, Ganesh Ramlall.
Ramlall is just a sham. What is there to hide Mr. Lall. Is your wife trying to join you and escape the tax man too?
Big, big session with world leaders to discuss climate change. Our two boys, Bharrat Jagdeo and Robert Persaud are there too batting for money to swing Guyana's way for up keeping our standing forests. Lo and behold, Jagdeo get up and talk how he had no vision while he sat as Minister of Finance. He even blamed himself for not having the vision. No us say so, it was reported here in BBC. Scrool down to about the final two items and hear for yourself folks.
Ban warned against "backsliding" on clean-air targets just as EU leaders in Brussels considered a watered-down plan for making industry buy permits to emit carbon dioxide, the gas most blamed for global warming.
Europe's apparent wavering stoked discord at the UN climate conference, part of efforts to reach a global deal next December to reduce emissions of gases emitted when fossil fuels are burned.
Guyana's president, Bharrat Jagdeo, said he feared the world's economic downturn would divert money and attention from fighting climate change as countries seek to protect jobs and industries.
"If Europe sends a signal that it can make deep commitments only in prosperous times, what are the developing countries going to say, including China?" Jagdeo told delegates gathered in Poznan, Poland, for the last two days of this year's main UN climate meeting.
Emissions have been rising most rapidly in emerging economies such as China and India. In bargaining for a global deal, developing nations are under pressure to curb emissions in return for pledges of new cuts by industrialized countries.
Ban urged governments to treat the global financial crisis as an opportunity to speed investment in clean technology. He evoked the New Deal, a massive public works programme launched by US president Franklin D Roosevelt during the Great Depression.
"We need a Green New Deal," he told government leaders as they began two days of high-level talks. "This is a deal that works for all nations, rich as well as poor." [_]
In the Georgetown PPL, also offshore Guyana, the survey was expanded by 200-sq km (77-sq mi) to 1,850-sq km (714-sq mi). The Georgetown survey has been shot in parallel with the Corentyne and is expected to be completed after the New Year, the company says.
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