— says PPP general secretary and his ‘do little’ cabal damaged Guyana

THE son of Dr. Cheddi Jagan, Guyana’s former President and founder of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), Dr Joey Jagan (Jr) is warning voters to be aware of People’s Progressive Party (PPP) headed by Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo.

“Joey” as he is fondly called, in a letter to the editor in this newspaper on Sunday said the PPP has strayed from the concepts of its party leader, and, in doing so, it [the party] damaged the country’s economy. The damage, he said, occurred under the leadership of Jagdeo.

Giving his observations, Jagan said with Guyana rapidly approaching oil production in 2020, political stakes are high and citizens are anxious about receiving the opportunities they deserve from Guyana’s new-found wealth.

However, it is during this period, he deducted, that the Jagdeo-led Opposition seeks to condemn Guyana’s arrangements with oil-giant ExxonMobil through which the country must gain its footing towards a developed economy.

“Some of our ‘experts’ decry the financial and technological arrangements which we have with ExxonMobil, finding fault and opposing this great investment. Those malcontents should understand that over the next two years, ExxonMobil will invest over 35 billion US dollars in worldwide oil exploration without a clear prospect of oil recovery and with the price of oil not yet $60 a barrel, the investments are not always profitable,” Jagan said.

He added: “We in Guyana should be proud and excited that the largest company in the world is investing real money into our economy; this will eventually attract other good foreign investments and trade to our republic in areas such as agro-industry, mineral extraction, our water potential, our fishing potential, our forest potential and other new avenues to make up for lost time and lost opportunity.”

On Saturday, Director of the Department of Energy, Dr. Mark Bynoe, announced that Guyana has raked in over US$75 million in 2018 from local content in the oil and gas sector.

Dr Bynoe said the figure was directly derived from the emerging sector and does not include downstream impacts of the industry such as works in mechanics, electrical work, welding and technical warehousing, among others.

The late President’s son stressed that foreign investment and trade, along with the private sector as the engine of growth, is the only way to turn Guyana around from a poor to a rich nation.

Added to this, he noted investment in education as the key to ensuring young people are granted the opportunity to study at the best universities to return to take up the mantle of leadership of Guyana.

He said: “Any government we have has to facilitate this notion and keep government committed to filling its ranks with younger professionals dedicated to the modern world and new ideas while decentralising power from the central government to our villages, towns and communities.”

MISMANAGEMENT
While Jagan sees this as the obvious and clear path towards turning the country around, he stated that the PPP’s manifesto fails to mirror these needs as Jagdeo’s track record leaves behind a trail of mismanagement of the country’s resources.

“The PPP/C demitted office only three years ago, so it is pretty easy to show that the ‘Gang of 8’ who runs that party are against the very concepts which I put forward above. Under their aegis, there was no real foreign investment and trade and no intention of facilitating the economy so that the private sector could really become ‘the engine of growth’ and more young people left these shores as no real investments in education were ever done,” Jagan said.

Jagdeo served as President from 1999 to 2011after former President Janet Jagan resigned for health reasons.
Meanwhile, the ‘Gang of Eight’ referenced is a political term representing a built-in, simple majority of eight out of the PPP’s 15-member Executive Committee which remain loyal in support of the political decision of a leader.

Continuing on his assessment of the Jagdeo-administration, Jagan said: “The free computer giveaway under Jagdeo was a farce, the shoddy ‘fixing’ of schools was a joke; no buses to take our children to school; no hot meals for our schoolchildren and on and on, compounded by (as President Cheddi always said) ‘squandermania’, as exhibited by such failures as the Skeldon sugar fiasco, Jagdeo’s brainchild. Our biggest industry, the sugar industry, where the workers support the PPP/C, took plenty of blows when Jagdeo was in power and the sugar workers were treated with contempt, while the industry went broke and became a drag on our economy.”

In recent years, the current government moved to downsize the sugar industry — which was causing the government billions in debt— to make the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) more efficient.

Some estates and factories were amalgamated and others were divested with retrenched sugar workers receiving severance payments.

DID LITTLE
While the tough decision was a necessary one to make, Jagan said that, in comparison, the Opposition, which currently feeds its political campaign off of the unfortunate situation, did little to aid sugar workers or to prevent the industry from failing.

He pointed out: “Jagdeo never brought innovations, market adjustments and better pay and conditions for our brothers and sisters in the sugar industry and himself and Komal Chand (both members of the Gang of 8) conspired to have the workers’ union(GAWU) leadership be a part of the government which was really the employer– a real betrayal of the rights of the sugar workers who are really taken for granted every time elections are held.”

Jagan’s disapproval comes as Jagdeo, at memorial function intended to recognise the legacy former President, Dr. Jagan, called on residents of the Babu Jaan community to “chase” members of the government when they visit.

“In this period they have the nerve to celebrate the life of President Cheddi while doing the opposite of what he would have longed for. The voters of our Republic will reject the do-nothings who dominate the PPP today– the Gang of 8,” the late President’s son asserted.