Dear Editor,

GRATEFUL if you would publish the following letter in your Letters Column. Many thanks.
Messrs Jagdeo and Irfaan Ali have been soliciting the votes of sugar workers, rice farmers, and even public servants, whom they have left at the bottom of the barrel for over two decades. Jagdeo in particular has rightly been making a lot of fuss over conflicts of interests with one of the coalition ministers involving as much as G$10 million over a period of a couple of months or so. Can’t fault the guy: give Jack his jacket, as they say — he’s really raising some serious conflict-of-interest issues here.
What I think we would like to ask Mr Jagdeo is what he has to say about the following instances of price gouging, corruption, financial waste, and gross misappropriation of money under the PPP up to the end of their term in office?
Excluding the full value of the CJIA project which is still a work in progress, the value of the misappropriated ‘Pradoville’ lands and the hundreds of millions of dollars spent to build Jagdeo’s mansion; a rough calculation of the total corruption, misappropriation and financial waste is G$162,394 billion (or G$162,394,000,000). And this is just the tip of the iceberg, for the last couple of years of the PPP administration.
1. G$372,000,000 stolen from rice farmers by officials of the national rice management authorities.
2. The US$200 million (G$40 billion) spent on the factory at Skeldon that Jagdeo’s advisers told him was too big for the estate.
3. G$424,000 Toilet bowl units for the CJIA (the same US$150 million contract that is currently attracting a lot of attention.)
4. G$5,200,000,000 ($5.2 billion) misappropriated from the NIS for CLICO.
5. G$2,600,000,000 ($2.6 billion) misappropriated from the NIS to finance the Berbice Bridge.
6. G$29,000,000,000 ($29.0 billion passing through the personal accounts of PPP officials.
7. G$80,000,000,000 (US$40 million or G$80 billion) to finance the road to the Amaila Falls.
8. G$639,000,000 misappropriated by PPP ministers.
9. The US$41.6 million (G$83.2 billion) taxpayers’ resources that were spent that were from NICIL’s accounts to finance the Marriott project.
10. The G$4,500,000,000 (G$4.5 billion) spent by the PPP, which had been cut from the 2014 budget.
11. And then, there’s ‘Pradoville,’ which are state lands misappropriated by the PPP administration to none other than Jagdeo and company.
And Mr. Jagdeo and Irfaan Ali want us to put them back in office? Building the future we want, creating and managing the wealth we envision for ourselves cannot be achieved by embracing corruption and mismanagement of the past. This can only be achieved by change. And that change can only come from us.

Regards
Craig Sylvester