TRUST AND THE TANGLED TIMES

THE Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has placed Guyana at the top of its index for 2018 on countries with the most honest politicians in the Western Hemisphere. In fact, Guyana tied with Canada, at 16 points, for the first place. Haiti received the lowest ranking at 54 points.

But the self-professed demon of truth, Times, got into a hell of a tangle when it chose to peep at the table on trust through the rear end. It was all glee and excitement as it turned the table upside down and reported this lop-sided conclusion:
“The IDB ran a survey about ‘trust’ folks in the hemisphere have in their politicians. And guess what? Guyana came in dead last!! That is, out of the 29 or so countries polled, we trust our politicians the least!”

Actually, the Kaieteur News first ran the fake story on October 3 under what it later admitted as “a sensational but incorrect headline”, but retracted it. The following day it reported that “Guyana, joined by Canada, rated as the country with the most trusted politicians.”

FAKE STORY
Times obviously stole the fake story hook, line and sinker. I can see the good-natured Glenn Lall, publisher of the “Waterfalls” newspaper, writing eventually in Dem Boys Seh: “Thief from thief mek God laugh”.

The opposition-aligned broadsheet would be the last to report anything that could place Guyana, under the Coalition Government, in a good light. But, unless the study intended otherwise, the IDB pronouncement refers to all Guyanese politicians, including Times’ closest friends who governed the country at a time when Guyana had become notorious for “pervasive corruption”.

It appears that Times may have plenty reasons of its own for believing and peddling that citizens have no trust in their politicians. They know intimately those who had doled out multi-billion, single-sourced, questionable contracts. Those deals formed the tip of the corruption pile.

We would probably never know whether there are politicians out there who had benefitted from disproportionate wealth, now that information is seeping out that some of them in high places did not make statutory declarations of their incomes and assets to the Integrity Commission!

$20B EARNINGS
I would never forget the day when a young man, who was in the leadership of the PPP and had held a senior public service post, walked into my office to tell me that he was being investigated by the police in relation to monies he had “earned”.
“How much money are they looking at?” I asked him.
Calmly, he answered: “$24 billion.”

That story didn’t make waves, not for long. Like the Pradoville scandal, where key PPP government officials disgracefully and dishonestly helped themselves to posh residential State land for personal use and real estate speculation, the opposition claimed “discrimination” and “witch-hunting”.

But we saw the prolonged fuss over the “signature bonus” that the government received to prosecute the defence of our territorial integrity. We also saw the zeal with which the opposition deployed its mobile, protest brigade to demand payment of the balance on severance package to redundant sugar workers. And on its heel, we saw the stoking of industrial smoke over the just demands of the nation’s teachers.
Well, the Minister of Finance has spoken definitively to the issue of severance. The workers could expect to get the balance by mid-November. As for teachers, the government and union have clinched a three-year agreement that has put to rest the major issues that were on the negotiation table.

CONTENTIOUS ISSUES
The Coalition government has been removing, one by one, the contentious issues on the plate of the opposition that were exploited momentarily to produce a bad press.
Now, running out of steam over real issues, they have resorted to shadow boxing with imaginary problems, such as a single elector claiming that he was fooled into supporting an AFC constituency candidate in a Corentyne local government area. The PPP chose to declare total war against this movement that seeks to dislodge it from inert leadership at the village level.

But this vicious poison campaign that the local government elections would be rigged will also pass; the people will easily see the PPP’s obsession as ‘eye-pass’ solely to besmirch the good name and character of this tiny but fighting party, and an idealistic, honest corps of young leaders.

When I first joined the Alliance for Change in 2011, it made the difference in the Parliament, where we held not only the balance of power, but ousted minority rule by moving a historic no-confidence motion against the PPP regime. Then we decided, for the 2015 elections, that we were forming a coalition with A Partnership for National Unity (APNU). We won those elections, and we entered the Government. We have since made a difference to governance.

VEXATIOUS LITIGATION
As I noted at the party’s candidates’ conference:
“We have been the young party, the young movement, a young revolutionary movement. Even though it has some old warriors in its ranks, we have shown that we could bring about a change in the way things have been done in Guyana, and that we could influence a new generation to be interested in politics.

“This is because, for too long, people have seen politics as being synonymous with poli-tricks. For too long, many people have seen politics as being synonymous with corruption…”

I believe that our local communities will be the deciding factor in the justice of the people’s cause for change, and for effective leadership. It will be the court of public opinion that would matter, not vexatious litigation, to which the PPP has resorted to discredit a political opponent.

This phase of muck-raking, also, will pass.

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