Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jun 16, 2015 Editorial
Life does not grind to a halt after elections. Of course, if the incumbent retains office, life continues as if nothing has happened. There is a return to the ways of the financial practices; projects undertaken during the last term are proceeded with. It is as if there was not even a blip on national life.
However, this changes when there is a change in Government. For one, new players enter the arena with their own plans and programmes. These players must then assess the economic situation of the country, by taking a close look at the public treasury and decide whether they would continue with all of the existing programmes.
It is for this reason that the people who are the real advisers of the government are public servants who do not exhibit any known political preference. In our corner of the world, the chief people who head the various ministries are the Permanent Secretaries.
Of course, Guyana had to break the mold when it sacked the Permanent Secretaries in 1992 and replaced the lot with people who the party felt were sympathisers. The result was that the examination of projects took longer than necessary.
There was a recent change in Government about a month ago. Since then much has happened. The new government claims that it is forced to pursue a trail of corruption. Indeed, in the days, months and years before the elections, there was the widespread view that corruption was rampant in Guyana.
International bodies rated Guyana poorly on the corruption index. Other groups found other measures to deem Guyana as one of the more corrupt countries in the world. The result is that the new government is seeking to satisfy itself that every report of corruption was inaccurate. However, there is enough evidence at this time to suggest that the earlier reports were accurate.
But this is not going down with the previous government which continues to accuse the present administration of vilification and of demonstrating rampant discrimination. So it is that the claims of the Petro Caribe fund being bare have been challenged by the previous government under which the fund started.
This is simple accounting. Either the fund is there or it isn’t. The government says that it isn’t and this could be was easily verified. But the real issue at hand is continuity. There are numerous projects that the previous government started. The new government must therefore be in a position to continue them or to halt them.
However, a lot of money has been spent so to close them down would be to actually throw away good money. The issue then becomes one of review. The People’s Progressive Party, when it assumed office in 1992, re-examined a number of projects that the People’s National Congress government had started. One of them was the Essequibo Coast road; the other was the Soesdyke/Linden Highway.
It turned out that the new government opted to scale them. Instead of resurfacing the entire Soesdyke/Linden Highway the government opted for patching critical sections of the roadway, something that has turned out to be more costly than the resurfacing that had been previously planned.
So it is that any review of the existing projects must be carefully looked at. The airport expansion project may be scaled down but it certainly cannot be halted. Too much has gone into it. Similarly, the hydro falls project should be reviewed with a view to ensuring that Guyana gets the best possible cost.
The government said that when it was in opposition it could not get answers from the ruling clique so this probe into the projects is necessary. Ironically, this is the same charge the PPP made when it came into office.
It would seem that despite the passage of the years nothing changes. No wonder that we are considered as developing. Perhaps 100 years later we would still be developing because we have not learnt the rudiments of government. But then again, we may be learning now.
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