Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 17, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
As the PPP celebrates the attainment of 65 years, a looming loss of power threatens the luxurious life the PPP leadership enjoyed from plundering this poor, impoverished land.
The trouble in paradise is deepening with every passing day as we approach that inevitable election date.
If power is lost in a general election not only is paradise lost but the very existence of the PPP goes down. No other party in the world wants to be in the PPP’s shoes because a new government is bound to seek prosecution.
From the time Bharrat Jagdeo came to power, a harem of wealth was constructed where philistine politicians built an individual empire of gold, diamond and perfume-oozing beds. The power of luxury and the luxury of power created this fantasy world that the Jagdeo cabal thought would have lasted forever. This existence is now in trouble.
Within ten years of Jagdeo rule, ruling politicians, their families, relatives and friends have amassed wealth so stunning that as a cabal, their assets can rival any other conglomerate in the business world of any CARICOM country; and Trinidad has enormously wealthy people.
One of the most talked about story, whether gossip or factual is that the champion of dirt is the richest man in Guyana. As the rumours fly, there must be some truth about it. The champion’s name has been associated with capital accumulation for over ten years now. People say his money is canopied under the business ventures of the class he single-handedly invented – the nouveau riche.
Little boys and girls, elderly people, the young and the middle-aged all talk about the corruption that sprang up under the leadership of the champion. The beneficiaries of the champion’s largess have created a fortress of money for themselves in Guyana.
When dusk covers Guyana, paradise comes alive. Pradoville One and Pradoville Two have their constant parties where if an amateur journalist drops out of the skies to cover it, he would think he is seeing a debauched abandonment of a Hollywood movie mogul. The combined cost of the vehicles parked outside these Pradoville parties outstrips the combined GNP of the small CARICOM states.
The champion and his nouveau riche partners live a life born in post-modern luxury. A bowel ailment saw the champion flying over to the US in a chartered private jet. His friends pay out millions of American dollars to own a part of Caribbean cricket. There is an uncanny similarity with Allan Stanford. He too spent millions of American money to buy Caribbean cricket. Afterwards he bought a jail cell where he will spend the rest of his life.
The inexorable construction of “skyscrapers” and the blooming of retail businesses all over Georgetown with stores that are not half-empty but completely empty, and the gold rush are just but three examples of the wealth of the nouveau riche on display.
Rumours have it that it is the champion’s money but it is also the money that comes from what our esteemed economist Clive Thomas calls, the informal sector.
Can this surreal existence survive a change of government in 2015? The answer is no. Should the opposition win the government, la dolce vita comes to an end. The pressure to investigate this overnight accumulation of wealth will simply be too enormous on the new administration for them to ignore.
Much of this money came from corruption, tax evasion, drug trafficking and state funds that went to preferred contractors. One man gets all the pharmaceutical contracts. One man gets all the infrastructural contracts, one man builds all the new schools, one man supply all the vehicles.
The sum total is money that cannot be measured even by the CIA super-computers.
Just three examples will show how fairyland will disintegrate if power changes hands in the forthcoming elections. Tax evasion will be confronted. Why should a new government, hard-pressed for cash, allow the hemorrhaging of money to private people when the Treasury needs it? Competition will be encouraged for the supply of medical goods. Competition will be introduced for road construction.
It is not only the Treasury that loses money from the nouveau riche’s habit of tax evasion but local authorities too. The mansions that have gone up all over Guyana since 2000 have never been properly assessed for rates and taxes. The Georgetown City Council has lost billions over this period.
In 2015, the sores will be scraped off the anatomy of paradise leaving it bare for the nation to see its bones, bones of evil that once walked tall in the garden of pleasure and leisure created by the party of Cheddi Jagan sixty-five years ago.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
Apr 19, 2024
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