On Thursday of the week past, President David Granger delivered to the National Assembly his fourth address as Head of State. The varied address dealt with a broad menu of national issues including quality of life, economic and environmental policies and insight into budget 2017 among others.
However, it was when His Excellency spoke to the issue of public trust that he encapsulated the very essence of what Guyana, as a model developing nation must aspire to be. Guyana has been incrementally emerging from its pre-May 2015 history of a fledging narco-state, major trans-shipment point for illicit drugs from South America to North America and Europe and a nation tethering on the edge of anarchy with rampant crime, piracy, extra-judicial and mass killings, kidnappings and a host of violent drug-related reprisal crimes.
SAFE FUTURE
The President outlined, that “[t]he green state will ensure that we bequeath to our children and grandchildren a secure and safe future and a higher quality of life. The green pathway to development will allow for us to sustain economic growth, generate new sectors and additional jobs, build a more resilient and diversified economy, promote human development, reduce inequalities and ensure the safety, security and general well-being of our country.”
What President Granger, in effect, was articulating is that, as a nation with such a troubled past, we must reimagine the country we aspire to cultivate, build and live in. No more must our well-being be in such tatters that the ambition of the majority of Guyanese is to acquire a visa to anywhere but here. A new, reimagined Guyana must provide a comfortable and fulfilling life right within these 83,000 square miles for all Guyanese. Under the previous administration we had the resources but lacked the will. President Granger articulated this Coalition Government’s intent and will to change.
President Granger spoke against the background of a not-so-distant reality which we cannot ignore. It was since President Granger was sworn in as Guyana’s 8th executive president seventeen months and three days ago, on May 16th, 2015 that the nation began to understand, in a fulsome way, how dependent Guyana’s economy had been not on sugar, gold, bauxite and timber but on the illegal narco-trade and its attendant tentacles.
CLEANSING GUYANA
The monies circulating locally as a result gave a false sense of economic prosperity. Now that the Coalition Government has been making deliberate efforts to cleanse Guyana’s economy it has resulted in an anticipated drying up of the lavish drug funds and a slowdown in economic activity has been the inevitable result. Many enforcers, look-outs, couriers and such like who depended on the drug trade for a living in a PPP-economy which did not provide legal jobs for them have since turned to petty crimes. It has compounded the problem which the Ministry of Public Security and the Guyana Police Force have been gallantly combating.
However, this is not a permanent state of affairs but a difficult and necessary transitionary period towards a better Guyana. This is a temporary state of affairs. It is anticipated that with measures to be proposed in budget 2017 and subsequent budgets by Finance Minister Winston Jordan, along with the opening up of new agricultural lands, the intensification of preparations for the operations of the oil and gas sector, the pursuit of major infrastructural projects along with the prospects of foreign direct investments, there will be a ‘clean’ regeneration of Guyana’s economy.
As President Granger outlined, the focus of government, working in conjunction with the private sector and local and foreign investors will be to build a more resilient and diversified economy which will allow for sustained economic growth, generating new sectors and more jobs for our Guyanese people.
This is not a quick fix approach which was the mantra of the previous administration. It is the difficult, prudent, unattractive and tedious approach to national planning and economic stability. This Coalition Government could very well have taken the easy route. It could have emulated the previous administration and turn a blind eye to the narco trade and other illegal activities in an effort to keep “the money running” and those who were profiting from these “hustles” happy.
APPROACH
Such an approach would not only have been reckless and irresponsible but unsustainable. It would have inevitably led the nation down the road to anarchy and severe internal strife. Such a scenario is neither theoretical or imperceptive. A hop, skip and a jump away, in Colombia this was reality for many years. The country is still, to this day, grappling with the after-effects. The security forces, even with massive international aid had engaged in a years long and bloody battle against mega-drug kingpin, Pablo Escobar who effectively presided over parts of Colombia where the government had lost control. Hundreds of thousands of innocent lives were lost. Judges, police officers, teachers, farmers and others were ruthlessly exterminated.
Here in Guyana, prior to 2015, the nation had begun to witness the emergence of untouchable drug lords. Ordinary people lived in daily fear of these well connected dons. Today these drug kingpins are scampering from law enforcement and some are in shackles and in jail. What this illustrates and what it should signal to the people of Guyana is that the elections of May 2015 did not merely result in a change in government but a change in the manner in which the country and the economy are managed. The rule of law must take precedence. Guyana must no longer be known in the Caribbean and internationally as a delinquent state flirting with failure.
HAT IN HAND
In spite of efforts to paint him as someone who possesses economic prowess, it was during the Presidency of Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo that former Prime Minister of Jamaica Mr. Bruce Golding, in 2008, in an obvious reference to Mr. Jagdeo, said that some CARICOM leaders had developed a reputation for “[going] around, hat in hand, to every capital of the world like panhandlers on the street, telling people how we are the wretched of the earth, we are poor and that we need all sorts of charity.”
This savage castigation and condemnation of former president Jagdeo by a then sitting fellow head of state was an indictment of his management of Guyana’s affairs and the approach of mendicancy which was heavily relied upon to sustain the local economy.
“I am tired of that,” declared a disgusted and frustrated Prime Minister Golding. That is a sentiment echoed by the majority of the electorate in the last election and indeed by all right-thinking, patriotic Guyanese who had become jaded and disillusioned with the reputation their beautiful country had developed around the world under the PPP.
The task of righting the rogue ship in dangerous waters is on the way. We have changed course and moved deliberately into calmer if somewhat sluggish waters. MV Guyana is edging forward at a gradual pace. As proper structures and systems are erected and implemented to replace the fastidious ad hocism of the previous administration and as power is magnanimously decentralised away from the seat of the presidency and to the regions and communities, we will pick up steam and the dividends will accrue not for a select, elite, politically connected few, but for all Guyanese. That is the mission of this Coalition Government.
Imran Khan is the Director of Public Information and Press Secretary to the Prime Minister. This is the first installation of a weekly ‘FYI by DPI’ column which he will pen and which will appear in our Wednesday edition.
