One of the major planks of the PPP/C administration’s developmental drive is a concretisation of public/private partnerships, which has catalyzed unprecedented growth in Guyana.
And, apart from the prudent and astute management by the government of the nation’s fiscal affairs, NICIL has been the primary facilitating agency that has enabled this superlative success that has transmuted into a steady growth in the national economic dynamics.
But enter the hurricane combo of the AFC/PNC/APNU and their NGO and media satellites to threaten this landscape of socio-economic growth, which is being severely tested, because their relentless pillorying of public sector technocrats, government officials, and their facilitating and implementing institutions is driving away investors, as was confirmed by NICIL head, Winston Brassington.
Still fresh are memories of the destruction the PNC administration wrought in the private sector through its nationalisation and acquisition programme, whereby foreign and local investors were forced to concede all their holdings, including private properties for, in some cases, a token one dollar.  Those thriving businesses, properties in prime condition, dynamic industries such as bauxite all began deteriorating almost immediately after their acquisition by the profligate PNC administrative construct.
The bauxite industry, which had made a boom town of Linden, went into an instant free-fall, from which it never fully recovered, despite massive injections of capital and various stratagems by the current PPP/C administration, with the consequential socio-economic deterioration of Linden.  Subsidiaries such as the Guyana National Engineering Corporation (GNEC) also went into instant decline after takeover by the PNC.
Locally, the Kissoon family, the Gajraj family, the Toolsie Persaud family and other pioneering entrepreneurial families lost much to the PNC, which distributed a lot of their newly-acquired wealth to its supporters over the years of its tenure in government.
The private sector practically died during the years of PNC governance, and firms such as the Gafsons Group  survived only by transferring all their business overseas.  The Gafsons Group returned to Guyana post 1992 elections, when the PPP/C took the reins of government once more and again set out to restore this country to its rightful place as the diadem in the crown of the Caribbean, a gargantuan task indeed.
But it has succeeded magnificently, at least so far.  However, the opposition campaign to destabilise and/or completely stymie the government’s developmental thrust, through the massive cuts to the national budget, the rationale of which defies reason or logic, and other amoral and self-serving means is threatening to once more send Guyana’s developmental trajectory backward.  Their myopic agenda defies logic, until until one opposition media mogul Glenn Lall, and his Editor-in-Chief, Adam Harris, revealed the spirit and collusion in a joint effort by the collective opposition to destabilise the PPP Government, by whatever means necessary, and it has nothing to do with caring about Guyana or Guyanese, or good leadership – the opposite, in fact.
In public glare, on national television, the publisher of Kaieteur News admitted to publishing misinformation provided by (opposition) politicians about public figures and institutions.
Robert Badal, proprietor of the Pegasus Hotel, which has indubitably served the nation well, but which by and of itself cannot provide the quality of accommodation for the clientele Guyana’s tourist industry is hoping to attract in the near future, is vehemently opposed to the establishment of a hotel from the prestigious Marriott chain.  Badal’s narrow interests are of course being championed by the political party that he funds and of which he is a member – the AFC, and of course Badal’s interests have become Ramjattan’s interests, even if national interests are compromised.
Like the national stadium and other initiatives that the opposition collective has consistently attempted to shoot down, even as the idea germinated from the vision of PPP/C leaders, the Marriott hotel has been targeted with a relentless campaign of negativity by the naysayers and the doomsayers.
The opposition went after the jugular, or the root of the embryonic enterprise – NICIL, the facilitating agency; and one of their usual anti-developmental strategies is to destroy the credibility of the heads of agencies; in this instance Winston Brassington, CEO of NICIL.
So the campaign of character assassination began in overdrive by the opposition and its partners in the media.
But unlike former Police Commissioner Henry Greene, who naively allowed himself to be trapped by the plotters, thus paving the way for his professional demise, Winston Brassington had no black mark against his character; so the imputations, the allegations, the – what Christopher Ram admitted to, conjectures,  and the outright lies began and gathered momentum like a runaway train.
His acting as his overseas-based brother’s surrogate in a business enterprise, that in no way compromised the credibility of his functions within NICIL, ensued a conspiracy theory from his tormentors.  The  accusations were relentless and damning – some with facts twisted totally out of context and some outright lies, which were delivered so convincingly that the public were persuaded that NICIL and Brassington were collaborating with government to defraud the nation’s coffers, at the expense of taxpayers, when instead the opposite is true.  NICIL has been wisely investing the state’s resources to the national benefit, which has driven the successful private/public partnership that has been so crucial to the upswing of Guyana’s socio-economic indicators; and this was done under Brassington’s prudent stewardship of the holding entity.
The funding amount for the government’s investment in the Marriott Hotel has already been earmarked, which has left NICIL’s coffers almost bare; but Ramjattan, Nagamootoo, Greenidge, Ram and the rest of the opposition cabal concocted a fairytale of $50 (Linda, pls check if this is billion or million?), and their echoes in the media ran with it, along with all the other ingredients in the witches brew meant to destabilise NICIL and deter it investing in the Marriot hotel, thus protecting Badal’s interests.
Now let us have a look at the credibility of the main protagonists of this imbroglio, the rest just opportunistically and strategically ran with the AFC’s campaign because it falls in line with their general agenda to destabilise the PPP/C administration.
The AFC has allegedly received large amounts in campaign funding from an interested party so Ramjattan was protecting the AFC’s funding base.
Christopher Ram’s accounting firm has made millions of dollars in contracts for periodically auditing NICIL’s books for projects, yet while he was collecting the millions he found no flaw nor fault with the entity or its management.
Likewise Moses Nagamootoo, who has also made millions from NICIL for legal work, primarily on the re-settlement programme for the residents of D’Edward Village to facilitate the Berbice River Bridge; as well as the families that had to be re-located to facilitate the Hope Canal.
The “new dispensation” in the National Assembly has provided the wherewithal for greater collaboration between government and opposition to drive this nation’s developmental trajectory to unparalleled heights.
Instead, in order to protect narrow partisan interests, to take revenge for personal slights, to show the government who is boss, the joint opposition, with support from the opposition media, is putting major stumbling blocks to impede national development.
That this destabilisation campaign has severe negative impacts on the Guyanese people, with the very survival of some entire families being threatened, matters not a whit to these leaders (sic!), whose own supporters are currently on the breadline.
In their own words the Guyanese people are merely “collateral damage” in their muscle-flexing egomania, which in real terms have serious adverse consequences to nation-building.
However, President Donald Ramotar has stated unequivocally that his government would strategise to cushion the negative impacts of the joint opposition’s irresponsible and irrational anti-national and anti-people acts, and that neither the Guyanese people nor the Marriott hotel would be reduced to becoming any political party’s “collateral damage”.