A sweet escape

Nov 11, 2024 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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…Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News- Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, the perennial oracle of all things government, now claims he’s barely involved with GuySuCo’s sweet saga. Yes, the very man who pokes his nose in every aspect of government (or so we believed) suddenly professes innocence when it comes to our sugar industry’s grim production numbers. One can almost hear him shrugging, “Sugar? Oh, I wouldn’t know much about that. I have not been engaged personally with that!’

Here’s a man who admitted to making a call to the Commissioner of Police about a suspected fraud involving pension books, and who spares little in reminding the nation that it was the APNU+AFC which placed some 7,000 sugar workers on the breadline. Here is a man who said that he had asked the Attorney General to look into the issue of the legality of the confirmation of the Commissioner of Police while on extended tenure, a matter far removed from the environment, finance and the natural resource sector over which he has oversight responsibilities.

At his weekly press conferences as General Secretary of the ruling party, there is hardly an issue over which he does not hold fort. Yet, ask him about GuySuCo’s nose-diving output? That’s for management to answer. His response was classic Jagdeo: a charming mix of evasion and deflection. It is as though sugar—a commodity his government has poured billions into—was some niche industry like artisanal pottery. The Vice President, it seems, is trying out a new flavour: sugar-free.

Jagdeo’s reluctance is particularly curious when you recall that he once promised to resurrect the Skeldon sugar factory, a hulking industrial project that has been called everything from “revolutionary” to “catastrophic” (depending on whom and when you ask). For those keeping score at home, Skeldon was supposed to be the future of sugar production in Guyana, a shining citadel of molasses and cane. Instead, it turned into the industry’s Achilles heel, a “fix” that cost us more money than the price of sugar on the global market. You’d think a man with that legacy might want to keep tabs on the cane these days.

And yet, the Vice President claims he hasn’t been “engaged” much with GuySuCo. It’s an oversight on par with a chef forgetting to season the soup. But Jagdeo is a busy man, juggling portfolios and, when asked the tough questions, shifting and deflecting like a deft politician After all, why bother with sugar production when he can focus on weightier issues, like making phone calls to check up on missing pension books?

It’s understandable, though. Who has the time to deal with sugar when you’re the go-to person for every other department? Sugar is messy, sticky, prone to overheating (like Albion’s fire-wrecked mill), and it doesn’t quite carry the allure of calling the shots in oil and gas or finance. Yet for someone who’s regularly “engaged” with nearly every ministry, corporation, and minor government affair, his sudden absence from GuySuCo feels, well, deliberate.

Jagdeo’s response has all the hallmarks of a classic move. His critics have long noted that he deflects when it comes to uncomfortable truths. We’re now left with a vision of our Vice President, the mastermind behind plans to revive the sugar industry, opting to leave its handling to the same management whose CEO was recently given a diplomatic post to the European Union. (One hopes he wasn’t sent there to sell sugar). Surely, the top brass could use Jagdeo’s insight, especially with the sugar industry now on its death bed.

The Vice President might have hoped that this latest statement would sweeten his press conference with a hint of plausible deniability. But the irony is unmistakable. Here we have a government that promised, in its manifesto, to reopen estates, restore jobs, and, just recently, to flood CARICOM with Guyanese sugar. And yet, the person everyone assumed was the architect of these grand plans seems unable or unwilling to comment on disastrous production numbers while reminding us of the mechanization that is taking place in the industry, and despite claiming to be not much engaged, knows about the need for better varieties, one of which it is said can double yields.

Perhaps, deep down, Jagdeo knows that the promise to revive sugar was, much like the ill-fated Skeldon factory, one part ambition and two parts wishful thinking. After all, it’s easier to talk about grand plans than to contend with the relentless grind of production output, labour issues, and challenges posed by the weather. And so, in the great GuySuCo fiasco, he chooses instead to play a bit part, a reluctant cameo in an industry he once headlined.

In the end, Jagdeo’s disinterest is a bitter pill, or rather, a bitter cube of sugar. It’s hard to believe that someone who has passionately weighed in on nearly every sector in the land could remain so aloof from one of the government’s most troubled ventures. But then, that’s Jagdeo—a man who’s always in the room, until suddenly, he’s not. So, where does this leave the sugar industry? Right where it’s been since Skeldon—a muddle of lofty promises and lackluster returns, with production numbers as elusive as Jagdeo’s engagement with them. As for the Vice President, he may very well be counting on us to overlook the whole thing. Because, as everyone knows, sugar is best enjoyed when it’s out of sight and out of mind.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)                       

(A sweet escape)

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• Bharrat Jagdeo, Guyana, GUYSUCO, Peeping Tom, sugar

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