GRANGER, Nagamootoo, Ramjattan, Greenidge and others in the Opposition collective have launched an incessant campaign against Government for its support to the sugar and rice industries, especially the sugar sector.However, at that coalition’s Whim rally last Sunday, those who have heard them in and out of Parliament denounce Guyana’s sugar industry as a costly white elephant that should not be supported with funds from the treasury, even though the monies were special grants from the EU for bolstering the industry, were shocked at David Granger’s volte’ face when he declared that the coalition would ‘save’ the sugar industry.

And this hypocrisy threaded through their positions on every issue – education, when they cut the budget for student loans. Cheap energy when they drove away the investors of the Amaila Falls hydro project, even while their candidates Nigel and Cathy Hughes were benefiting financially from them.

And when they were not changing their positions like shape-shifters, they were stealing the PPP/C’s developmental concepts and projections and presenting them as their own. It is as if the Opposition has no visionary capacity to create developmental strategies and programmes of its own.
Their ‘rent-a-crowd’, bused in from opposition strongholds, who ironically could have made it only because of the much-maligned Berbice bridge, cheered at all the promises being lavishly made without wondering how these promises would be fulfilled. They did not consider that requisite income has to be garnered from some source before monies could be spent to fructify those fanciful but obviously empty promises.

Granger’s contradictory positions on every issue he addressed belie the coalition’s sincerity and credibility and underscores their desperation to win votes at all costs. All the speakers were obviously playing to the gallery because they were fully supportive of advice by executive member of APNU, and self-proclaimed sugar expert, Anthony Vieira, who had touted the replacement of sugar production with alcohol-ethanol as a more viable option.

In an amazing about-turn on former positions, Granger said: “We need you, Corentyne; Guyana needs you…We need your sugar and we are going to save sugar; we need your rice and we need your fish.” Prior to this declaration, every pronouncement he made on the sugar sector was negative.
Similarly, Ramjattan’s shocking lies disgusted those who have heard him support Vieira. He averred at Whim: “We are not in any way going to close the sugar industry…We have to make it profitable because it is that which creates so much employment, not just directly, but also indirectly, for so many people across this country”. This has perennially been the PPP/C’s mantra, but it was unashamedly stolen by Opposition leaders last Sunday.
According to a report in this newspaper, “On March 12, 2014, in an invited comment, Ramjattan had told the online ‘INews’: “We have called ever since for the Government to make that investment in ethanol production the order of the day, and we have Brazil and other firms from India that can help in that regard, and also help Guyana in the long run to save billions in foreign currency and fuel”.
Taking a jab at the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo), the AFC Executive at that time insisted that, ‘We cannot allow GuySuCo to keep eating up $200B when its factories (Skeldon, Berbice) aren’t working satisfactorily’. He opined at the same time that the Government had been fighting to keep the industry alive because they felt that they needed to provide employment for its supporters who are largely cane-cutters.”
Moses Nagamootoo, who was like a dog wagging its tail every time Granger barked, expounded on the same issue, with similar doublespeak as he stated, “only a real government will fix the sugar industry.”
Well, the PPP/C is a real Government which has been saving the sugar industry from the Opposition’s threat of closure of that sector; and playing to the gallery is not the way they have been accomplishing this.