IN response to Michael Hope’s asinine letter “The PNC had Achievements,” it seems we have another revisionist historian in our midst.Notwithstanding consecutive election victories since the restoration of democracy, the PPP Government continues to be on the receiving end of blatant misinformation and outrageous political commentaries; where their lyrics express fury that the PPP/C Party remains in Government.
Hope’s letter states “Let me mention some of the PNC achievements during their leadership: the Linden Highway, the Demerara Harbour Bridge, the Canje Bridge, President’s College, the NIS, the construction of the Umana Yana in 1972, and the Guyana Rice Marketing Board that was disbanded in 1993 by the PPP/C. The Amerindians were given land titles in accordance with the 1966 constitution. In the PNC era schoolboys went to the city to play school cricket that does not exist now; we travelled all the way from Region One.”
What it didn’t state was The World Bank’s Group Report of 1994. The Report, referring to the 1988-1992 period, noted: “The Government’s capacity to deliver essential services has virtually collapsed. Infrastructure remains severely dilapidated. The supply of potable water is limited to a small proportion of the population, drainage and irrigation systems have deteriorated to the point that they are no longer useful, and health and education services have become so inadequate that social indicators for the country have fallen to among the lowest in the Caribbean.” This Report, indeed, dismissed the so-called gains from the ERP. In fact the Economic Recovery Programme (ERP) meant nothing more than Empty Rice Pots for the Guyanese people.
Concessional lending met its debt obligations and increased economic growth rates between 1993 and 1997; but the sordid and disturbing impact of social infrastructural devastation at the 1992 baseline, urgently required a new dynamic and comprehensive strategy to sustain Guyana’s debt burden, if the masses were to receive any meaningful social services. Those like Michael Hope who think that Guyana was in fine shape in 1992 and prior need to re-examine their conclusion as when the PNC demitted office in 1992 it left a debt ridden bankrupt country. Billions of dollars were expended by both pre-1992 PNC governments on projects which failed miserably with nothing being left to show.
CEDRIC LORD
