IT is standard operating procedure for political appointees of an outgoing government to resign. The expectation that political appointees of the former APNU+AFC administration would take such a principled course of action has not fructified.

PNC-led governments – pre-1992 and the recent Granger-led administration populated the public service landscape with many dysfunctional square pegs in sinecure positions and paying them hefty amounts, with even more being expended on wide-ranging, luxurious benefits. SARA’s aging head, for instance, is being paid in excess of $4M per month, with presidential benefits – all at taxpayers’ expense.

In every ministry, subject ministers are discovering anomalies in administration procedures, especially in financial departments that are horrific revelations, explanatory as to why the nation’s coffers are empty and the country has once again become highly-indebted under another PNC-led administration; but none of the deadweight appointees seem prepared to take the ethical and honourable course of action and give up their gravy trains.

The fundamental prerequisite of good governance is accountability to the people, which was totally lacking in the coalition government.
As the days progress, profound insights are being parlayed to the general public by the authorities now in charge of the nation’s business, that expose the economic, political and social morass which the people endured under five years of the PNC-led authoritarian regime.

The magnitude of the exploitation of the nation’s resources for the benefit of a few privileged elitists, even while people, including coalition supporters, were practically starving as a result of unemployment due to COVID-19 lockdown, and the downturn in the economy, consequenced by the coalition government’s profligacy, mismanagement and outright corruption, is assuming gargantuan proportions.

It was this realisation that, without an immediate transition of administration, the hemorrhaging of the nation’s resources would continue unabated, that catalyzed a national unity of purpose – to restore democratic norms in Guyana, which led to the eventual installation of the PPP/C in Government.
The new government’s abiding care for the downtrodden and exploited, manifested even while out of office, has elicited a hope in the nation that fortunes – individually and nationally, would change and soon poverty would be banished from the national landscape. In recognition of this faith, and the suffering Guyanese endured over the past five years under the coalition regime, the governing PPP/C partnership has embarked on a crusade to eliminate all wasteful spending, and restore accountability in the way taxpayers’ monies are being expended.

Ridding the nation of those holding sinecure positions is one way of ensuring that the peoples’ money is being used for their welfare and not continuing the trend of financial wastage and profligacy that hallmarked the coalition government’s administration. This is not witch-hunting, but restoring accountability to the socio-economic paradigm of the nation.

When the David Granger administration of 2015 assumed governance, a massive witch-hunt began, with hundreds of politically-influenced and driven dismissals of even technocrats who were assumed to be PPP/C supporters, with unwarranted firing of public service workers sweeping in every sector – every community, first being 2000 Amerindians from Hinterland communities.

These arbitrary dismissals of largely non-political persons who were replaced by mainly incompetent, inexperienced political appointees are being reversed, because a country cannot be governed without knowledgeable employees.

The Irfaan Ali administration recognises that the right of conscience and political choice is a fundamental one that should be respected, hence its assurance that public servants who were employed on merit are assured of job security.

But no new government should tolerate political appointees who were given million-dollar contracts, some just before a transition of power.
Rather than optimising the gains inherited from its predecessor, the Granger-led administration almost immediately instituted CoIs to investigate and prosecute former government ministers and administrators, some mere technocrats performing a job they were appointed to do.
Arrests followed, but a continuum of investigations could prove no wrongdoing of those arrested. Millions of tax dollars were wasted in these fruitless exercises which, in effect, were merely another way of providing ‘jobs for the boys’.

Former President and General Secretary of the PPP, now Vice-President described the exercises that saw former ministers of the PPP/C government, as well as CEOs of national institutions handcuffed like common criminals, as witch-hunts meant to deflect attention away from the coalition government’s maladministration, and simultaneously persecute their adversaries in the former PPP/C administrative construct.
The Irfaan Ali administration is intent on restoring accountability and good governance where the people in the nation benefit from their country’s resources. So, for those persons who refuse to honourably resign from sinecure positions they have been enjoying at taxpayers’ expense, it is imperative that they are removed in accordance with constitutional prerequisites for the benefit of the nation.