Dear Editor

IF one is to be guided by recent missives to the pro- PPP/C media within the last few days, there is a particularly discernible commencement pattern of attacks against the APNU+AFC government, that are subtly aimed at the integrity and person of President David Arthur Granger.

Call it the classical tactic, of striking the head, so as to weaken the body, towards bringing it down in the process.
Well, Leslie Ramsammy, a former minister of the most corrupt government in the history of Guyana, and by extension, the CARICOM, has again published one of his numerous cesspool of lies in the Kaieteur News dated January 18, 2020, titled “Dishonesty, indecency and no integrity are hallmarks of the Granger-led APNU+AFC,” as a scandalous contribution that seeks to place the present government in the same category, where his former party leader and cabinet colleagues have been well documented.

In his well contrived and vile piece of written evil, designed at this extant moment, in its efforts to sway what is surely unsure support for a party which election campaign is premised on a plethora of lies and coated with the usual attempts at disinformation, deception, and fake news.
The lies are too many, and should therefore attract individual responses, since they ought not to be left unchallenged, lest they are repeated, and therefore, assume some form of truth. However, because of time, the main ones, are challenged.
• ‘’No government since Independence has been as indecent, dishonest and lack integrity, as this Granger –led APNU+AFC”.
For the gigantic scale of corruption that the coalition government would have inherited, which fact has been fully supported by the many auditing exercises, undertaken by the audit firms of known accounting/auditing professionals, many of them friends of the PPP/C; as well as acknowledged by the international donor communities – Ramsammy has to be fully corrupted in morals, to level such a charge against the government. He has to be either politically delusional, or a hapless victim of his party’s culture of political Munchausen, or both, to utter such falsities.

For the numerous efforts which the president David Granger-led administration would have effected, towards the eradication of the scourge of corruption institutionalised by the PPP/C regime, there have been commendations from the multilateral agencies, including both the IMF AND World Bank, in addition to the locally based international community. And what has been the contribution of Ramsammy’s political party boss to this worthwhile and challenging effort, initiated by the coalition? Continuous criticisms, that masks its refusal to join in removing this dangerous scourge from society.

And since Ramsammy’s incorrigible lies, splattered throughout his filthy rag, are aimed at the President of the Cooperative Republic, let me say this, without any hesitancy/apology:
In the person of President Granger, Guyana is fortunate, at this time to be led by a genuine national leader whose morality as leader of the country’s government, is undeniably, several notches above, and definably out of, the reach by any who the PPP/C would have produced, as president. And this is specifically directed to the persons of both Bharat Jagdeo and Donald Ramotar, former national leaders.

Here is a president who has set the bar, in the understanding of leadership by example; with a sustainable daily life of the highest integrity and personal decency, both in his private and public life. Most of all, his understanding of governance, in a deeply divided society as ours, has been ensuring that he governs in the national interest, where all citizens and their communities will benefit from his government’s socio-economic development policies. Ramsammy, therefore, should be reminded that a poll taken some time ago, by a well-known Caribbean pollster, revealed that President Granger is the person most trusted to lead Guyana as an oil producing nation. This was not fanciful or fiction; for already, one has begun to observe, the transformative visionary plan, as laid out in his announced Decade of Development, that will accelerate the pace of removing Guyana from the stagnancy of the socio-economic backwaters, in which Ramsammy’s party former government, bequeathed to the coalition government in May 2015.

• Again, Ramsammy is seeking to whitewash the horror of his former PPP/C government’s responsibility for the collapse of the giant that had been sugar, by claiming “GuySuCo has produced 90,000 tons of sugar, after always surpassing 100,000 for 100 years.’’
The simple truth, of which Ramsammy must again be reminded, is that thanks to the incitement by his political party, and executed by a continuously weak union which seems unable to realise that its sugar harvester membership is continuously used by the PPP/C for its selfish political ends. Resorting to the old, self-defeating weapon of strikes and work stoppages, coupled with a mechanical technology that had been allowed to fall into disrepair, by Ramsammy’s former government is the obvious reasons for the fall in production.

And here again, one must expose another Ramsammy lie about the government promising ‘’transparency and accountability’’, but refusing to account for (1) the EXXON Production Bonus, and (2) the 30B GuySuCo bond.
Ramsammy, always one to distort for obvious sinister reasons, is displaying why he is a self-made victim of the worst kind of political delusion.

It is all well known, despite the wicked attempts at criminalising the government for the production bonus, that it has been properly accounted for, with a recent Minister of Finance update that it has been able to garner in excess of $100M. But, sorry Leslie, the $30B, is not to be used for paying sugar workers increased salaries, as you and others responsible for the plight of the sugar workers, seek to inveigle the government into doing. And please be reminded, too, that since government has been the guarantor of such a huge sum, it has the right, in ensuring that its tranches are disbursed, for the sole purposes, agreed with the lending agencies, period!

• No! No! No! Leslie, you are so horribly immersed in the penchant for effortless lies, that you are in a much worse state of politically — vision impairment than initially thought. For you to now claim that thousands of small businesses have closed, and 30000 jobs lost, is the stuff that are made of dangerous political rabble rousers.
To be specific, business, although confronted by the year and period of the most treacherous act committed against the government, and designed to create social tensions with the aim of bringing the entire country to a socio-economic impasse, enjoyed a very prosperous year. In fact, more small enterprises came on stream, because of an enabling environment created by the APNU+AFC government. And this is not to forget the over $50B in investments declared by GO-INVEST.

Editor, there are other distortions and disinformation written in Ramsammy’s worthless letter, to which time does not permit a further response. However, time permitting, and with your permission – I intend to rebut them in another missive not long from now.
Regards
Earl Hamilton