The Observer
Stabroek News is at it again. This anti-government newspaper’s very tasteless and graceless Monday editorial seeks to ascribe evil
motives to President Jagdeo choosing to sell his home in Ogle and build another that would afford him greater privacy in
Sparendaam/Plaisance. But what is so wrong if the President, after giving so many of the best years of his life to this nation, wanting a home that
provides an ambience and environment that could enable him to continue to contribute toward  the escalating development of Guyana?
There are many projects and programmes that he has initiated which need his input, even if in an advisory capacity, to successfully
fructify.
It is a well-known fact that the PNCR administration, while it had no programme to house the poor, had distributed vast acres
of state lands and much national resources to its elitist members in the upper echelons of the party, while leaving its grassroots
supporters unsupported, homeless, and powerless.
This ratio in making needed resources available to only a select few while absolutely disregarding the needs of the poor,
homeless and powerless extended even to basic commodities, including foodstuff, especially during the years when essential items had
been banned by Burnham’s decree.
The poor and not-so-poor people of the land had to queue up in long lines extending for blocks outside stipulated PNC outlets
for a roll of toilet tissues, half a pound of butter, et cetera; and even for bread, when Hoyte was eventually forced to lift the ban
on flour and other basic commodities.
However, a senior member of this newspaper’s editorial staff worked during those times at the Guyana National Engineering
Corporation (GNEC), now GNIC, and witnessed containers of luxuries, including food items that were denied the masses, being offloaded
from ships directly on to waiting articulated vehicles, bypassing customs officers, and taken to addresses of high-profile Government
functionaries whose names appeared on the manifests.
Today, the entire landscape has changed in the country, with supermarkets, and even the streets, abounding with a plethora of
items imported from all across the globe, which is one of the many aspects of the freedom today enjoyed by Guyanese that they never
thought – even up to two decades ago, would ever be restored to them.
Access to cheap and affordable housing is another empowering tool that this government has gifted to this nation in its
developmental thrust that seeks to eradicate poverty in the land.
Yet the persons who have been instrumental in restoring the rights of Guyanese to their patrimonial heritage, whereby they are
accorded the right to survive in all its contexts in this land, are being denied those same fundamental rights by the very people who
had deprived the people of this nation of every basic right.
By every imaginable yardstick, Bharrat Jagdeo has served this country and its people beyond the call of duty, and has become
very beloved across every divide in the land.
And while one hopes that he does not abandon the Guyanese nation because he cannot constitutionally run for office a third
time, and because he has indicated that he has no plans to live elsewhere than here in his homeland. One hopes also that he will
continue to serve the people he has made his own, even out of the executive office, in some capacity or the other, and he cannot do
this unless he has a home of his own in this country he has served with dedication and absolute commitment – a home which he is
attempting to construct on land for which he has paid a fair market price to afford himself some degree of privacy and peaceful
pursuit of whatever interest he will seek in future.
However, members of the opposition, most of whom benefitted from PNCR largesse in past years at the expense of the state and
the Guyanese people, are hounding him and other state functionaries for daring to aspire to own their own homes in this land that
they are serving so well, many times at great personal cost.
The President said that he paid $5 million per acre for his land in the new housing development at Sparendaam which, if
translated correspondingly, would cost an approximate $500,000 for the same land in the low income developments.
However, all kinds of sinister interpretations are transforming the need of homes for executives who have served the country,
into a racist/capitalist context despite the fact that the new homeowners whom will occupy the properties at Sparendaam cut across
the social, political, racial and religious divides in this country.
There are some things that should be sacrosanct, and the need for housing a President who has to vacate state premises into
private quarters should be made top of the list.
Indubitably, Bharrat Jagdeo has served this country above and beyond the mandate of all the public offices he has held, and the
least the Guyanese nation can do is to allow him to retire with grace into his personal life without the nasty quagmire of lies and
innuendoes that has plagued his years of service to the people of this country.
At the very least, Guyana owes him that.