Dear Editor
NAME it, and Donald Ramotar, via the letter columns of both Stabroek News and the Kaieteur News, has done it: rancid lies, half-truths, deceptions, misinformation; all with the deliberate intention to mislead the Guyanese nation.

As a former president, and one who has earned the right to be described as an elder statesman and veteran politician who has been there, at most of this nation’s seminal moments, should be expected to offer perspective and guide towards our challenges, helping to make Guyana a better place.
However, this has not been Ramotar’s daily endeavour, given his dangerous politicking on behalf of his party, in his devious contributions towards it seeking to return to political power. His lies, outstandingly dangerous, without foundation, underline the communist construct of a person who would have spent some time in Eastern Europe, during the middle years of the cold war. His daily entreaties, well-honed in the crucible of the well-known Stalinist brand, which celebrated examples would have sent the likes of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Zhadanov, Bukharin, Rykov, and Kirov and numerous other prominent Soviets to their deaths on charges that were labelled “preposterous” and, at best, trumped up. On this side of the Atlantic, Ramotar’s lies have all the potential for destabilisation.

The good thing is that it does not ring true among sections of the Guyanese populace, because they are fully au fait with what has occurred during the period of PPP/C governance. It would not even hold among his party’s supporters who would have, with the rest of the nation, also lived through the years of the worst national administration ever experienced in the history of this nation. They can only stifle their moral consciences, because of race.
His missive, “Great reversals in the last four years”, in Stabroek News of May 19, is yet another stirring example of the infamy which Ramotar and his ilk continue to propagate. Reading this latest heap of dark treacheries, there is no doubt that it is an exercise intended to deflect from his party’s administration abysmal governance.
Three of these perfidious examples will serve to support my contention. It is only a liar of massive proportion, and one who intends to re-write history, that will accuse the APNU + AFC political parties of “…a very effective exercise of massive disinformation’’, during the 2015 election campaign. Ramotar then continues” I will not doubt that there was some corruption during the PPP time in government, however, it was never near to any level that the PNC-led APNU and AFC painted”.
This claim is a shameful disrespect to the intelligence of the Guyanese people, and even to those international bodies in whose numerous annual reports, the PPP/C administrations, both under Ramotar and is puppet master, Bharat Jagdeo, had been cited for the cancer of corruption.
It was a campaign that the then opposition mounted in a fair manner, because it had all of the facts, by way of annual auditor general reports, and media investigative sources which continually exposed the high-voltage pillage of the State.

Editor, the fact that Guyana had been branded a “criminal state” and Bharrat Jagdeo, President of a “Mafia state”, according to State Department report, should convey to Ramotar just what kind of administration that they were managing. For all the blind and devious denials that they have been making about their role in what had clearly been a criminal enterprise of gigantic proportions, they have never dared to refute the findings of professor Clive Thomas, well documented, detailed tracking and growth of this criminal carnivore of state and other resources.
It can only be a Guyanese citizen, devoid of any conscience and national shame, who will claim that “many in the leadership of APNU and AFC believed their own lies. That is why as soon as they took the reins of office, they began forensic audits.”

It is for that reason of not wanting to be informed by hearsay, or even circumstantial evidence, although very compelling in many instances, which caused the coalition to commence an auditing exercise; which has certainly exposed and brought to public light, the lecherous and parasitical state that exacted the untold venalities on the state and people of Guyana. If Ramotar is going to claim, as he has brazenly attempted to do in his missive, to make light of the level of state criminality under the administrations of his and Jagdeo’s governance, then he ought to be prosecuted for lies, in the same mould that Boris Johnson, leading British Brexiteer, and former Foreign Secretary is about to be brought to the English court for lies pertaining to Brexit. It is a story which the Ramotars and Jagdeos would do well to follow, as to how political liars are viewed in those parts of the world.

Ramotar is reminded that the audits fully supported the reality of the criminal state, as perpetrated and institutionalized under his party’s successive administrations. Here again, is Ramotar doing the well-known Jagdeo, of shifting accusations of corruption to the government of the day, by reference to the D’Urban Park Project: ‘’From the moment the regime took power, the APNU and AFC big boys and girls began a massive money grab …..The D’Urban Park Project became a milking cow ….billions are not properly accounted for…”

As far as is known about this project, in terms of money spent, it involves millions, and not the billions as is claimed by Ramotar, for both misinformation, and mischievous purposes. And if he has information on which coalition “big boys and girls’’ have been ‘’milking such a cow’’ for personal gain, then he ought to, as an upright citizen, submit such data to the government, who has demonstrated that it is not averse to investigating its own, if necessary. In fact, As I understand it, this matter is supposed to be the subject of a current audit.

Yet, at the same time, who is Ramotar to talk about “milking the cow”. Has he or his master ever took action against those of his former government; some party members, friends and cronies who feasted illicitly on state resources? It is they who have the billions, wherever it is stashed away. Finally, the old tune of GuySuCo is being played for political purposes. Again, it mirrors a wicked and sickened mind who would want to accuse the coalition government of pettiness, coupled with vindictiveness…. In the regime’s attitude to sugar”.

Without any pretence at diplomatic language, Ramotar and his ilk should hang their heads in national shame for what they have criminally done to a once giant industrial entity. Simply put – these political self-seekers not only used and abused the sugar workers for their own political ends, but knew that the entity had been sinking into the debt mire, and had been warned by a World Bank report to close Wales Estate in 2008 because it had become unsustainable. Maybe, it ought to explain to its constituents why it closed the Diamond, LBI, and Enmore estates. These were the troubling signs that had placed the GAWU leader, Komal Chand, on a collision course with then president Bharat Jagdeo. We all can recall the public exchanges, inclusive of a threat to de-recognise the union because of its growing concerns about the industry and by extension, its members/sugar workers.

Whatever action the current government took, in terms of downsizing, were not dissimilar to the then PPP/C government closing some sugar estates, as mentioned. There is no honest government that would have continued to pump tax-payers money into an entity that had become debt-ridden to the tune of multi-billions, for mere political reasons, such as ensuring its political hegemony of its political base. It amounts to an abuse of the nation’s tax-payers. And in any other jurisdiction, Ramotar and company would have faced judicial sanction. This continuous sugar mantra, as an example, epitomizes the gross dishonesty and lies of the Ramotars et al of the PPP/C.

The four years of coalition government administration has continued to unearth the misrule of twenty- three years, but has, since 2015, commenced to effect remedies and renewals to the image of the nation, eradicating the scourge of corruption and the many social ills, apart from restoring the foundation for national socio-economic growth and development that will benefit ALL Guyanese.

Regards
Earl Hamilton