Jordan to PPP/C… ‘Come with the facts!’ –if you want to talk ethnic cleansing
FINANCE Minister Winston Jordan, at 12:40 am Saturday morning, stood in the National Assembly to close the debate on the Motion he had put forward when he made his Budget 2015 presentation 12 days ago. Jordan addressed the National Assembly in the absence of Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo and the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) which had walked out just before midnight when Jagdeo concluded his one-hour-and-40 minute-long speech.
The Finance Minister delivered an emphatic speech, condemning many of the assertions made by Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo and members of the Opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP) that the David Granger Administration was engaged in ethnic cleansing of the public sector.
“In the areas of finance, that I personally know about,” Jordan said, “I can tell you that between 1992 and 2015, the PPP/C Government practised discrimination and nepotism in their placement of persons in international institutions.”
Jordan, while denying any intention of shaming such persons who were appointed to international institutions by the former Government, called the names of several offspring of known party affiliates, among them Lisa Ramotar, daughter of former President Donald Ramotar, who was given a position at the World Bank.
“It seems like no other Guyanese merited consideration for representation of his or her country at those prestigious multilateral institutions in nearly 23 years,” Jordan said.
He continued, “Those who scream ethnic cleansing must make sure that their facts are correct, and they must make sure that like Caesar’s wife, they are above suspicion; they must come with clean hands.”
The Finance Minister also rejected the assertion from the Opposition Leader that a better budget should have been presented. Jordan, responding to the assertion, recalled a recent conversation between him and Jagdeo, where he told Jagdeo he had already finished his rebuttal speech.
Jordan said Jagdeo inquired if he had finished the speech, even though he had not yet heard from him. “I told him,” Jordan said with conviction, “I don’t need to hear from you; I know what you are going to say, so my speech is already written. I know the individual; he hasn’t changed.”
Before his appointment as Finance Minister under the David Granger-led A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) Government following the Coalition’s win at the May 11 election, Jordan served for a number of years as Budget Director at the Finance Ministry.
Jordan had written budget speeches from the mid-1980s well into the years when Jagdeo was President.
The Finance Minister condemned what seemed to be the Opposition Leader’s constant reference to what happened in Guyana before 1992 during the Administration of the People’s National Congress (PNC), which is now part of the APNU faction of the Coalition Government.
“This ‘no-change’ is becoming quite repetitive and sickening; this harping and throwback to 1992,” Jordan said, adding: “We are 23 years on; and every debate in this House, every single debate has to do something with 1992.”
Jordan said he had stopped coming to debates because he was tired of hearing about 1992, saying that sometimes no reference is made to the “pressing issues” of the day. “I am sick of it, and I would not respond to anything in reference to 1992.”
SEAFRONT MANSION
Jordan also took a jab at the Opposition Leader’s seafront mansion on the lower East Coast, which allegedly has three transformers attached to it, while Guyana’s power company struggles to provide power to the masses. He challenged, too, the fact that Jagdeo enjoyed free water, “while many Guyanese have to contend with no water, or trickles from a standpipe.”
Jordan said the Opposition Leader, who condemned his budget speech, had learned quite a deal from him, but “sometimes you can teach, you can’t necessarily make the person learn.”
SO LITTLE SUBSTANCE
The Finance Minister referenced the “sterility” of speeches coming from the Opposition benches, which, in his estimation, were “so much talk, so little substance.”
Jordan said the budget presented by him on behalf of the APNU+AFC Government, entitled a fresh approach, is one which would ensure the restoration of good governance and the rule of law, and one which will clean up the “mess” left behind by the former Administration which sat in power for 23 years.
With the support of the majority, the motion on the debate was passed in the National Assembly and will now go to the Parliamentary sub-Committee on Business for consideration of the estimates.
By Derwayne Wills
