Guyana has become a hopeless hellhole under the PPP
DEAR EDITOR,
In 1942, the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
This is a profound statement and a critical indicator of development such as life expectancy, educational attainment, realization of economic goals, and inter-generational advancement.
Today, children are born into a Guyana that is massively corrupt and deeply in debt. Having taken his/her first breath, that child already owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to assorted international financial institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank and the Caribbean Development Bank.
Guyana’s foreign debt is in the millions of US dollars (more that 70 percent of its GDP) and frequent devaluations of its already valueless currency result in a skyrocketing of the debt by several millions weekly. Our dollar is not worth anything in comparison to the US dollar. In fact, it has been said that Guyana’s currency is not worth the paper it is printed on. It is considered monopoly money by many.
A child born today in Guyana will likely leave high school without passing the required five Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate subjects—the benchmark academic exit achievement for students and standard requirement to matriculate into most tertiary-level institutions. Seven out of 10 students who graduate, do so without passing a single science subject (Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology).
In Guyana, a mother and her baby have a 50/50 chance to survive the miracle of birth. The country’s public hospitals are deplorable and this is why members and their families in the PPP often seek medical treatment in the United States for simple ailments. They do not have confidence in the medical staff and facilities at the public hospitals.
Today, the children of Guyana are born into a society where income inequality is worse than Haiti and poverty is second only to that island nation. Nearly 45 per cent, one in two, or some 340,000 Guyanese are living below the poverty line. Their chances of having proper health care beyond birth have rapidly decreased, since most of the public hospital services are in a ramshackle state, with fewer and fewer Guyanese being able to afford even basic health care at the private hospitals.
The same is true for education, where more than 6,000 children drop out of schools every year and the chances for many others to graduate high school are slim.
Guyana’s economy is among the sickest in the Caribbean. In real terms, Guyanese are no richer today than they were in the 1970s and 1980s. And most of the country’s enduring problems, like its public finances, corruption, high levels of crime, crumbling infrastructure, poor health care and deplorable education system, are the result of over a decade of bad governance and neglect by the PPP regime.
Guyana is where it is today primarily because of the abominably low and immoral standards, thievery of state resources, and the vulgar and abusive behaviour of those in authority. Corruption is a debilitating disease, a cancer of the worst type. It has consumed our country.
Why is this possible? It is because those in power by and large are not a moral and self-respecting group. Rather, vulgarity, cuss-downs and race-bait politics have become the hallmark of the regime. Incompetents and the least of their intellectual apostles are often placed in top leadership and management positions.
The chronic negligence of Georgetown, education, especially UG and the public schools and health care, are classic examples of how the country’s public institutions have been hijacked and destroyed by the least able. City Hall, according the Fire Chief, could collapse at anytime.
Nepotism and cronyism are evident in every one of these institutions. Many of the PPP’s unqualified and inexperienced supporters have been rewarded with top positions because of years of loyalty and service to the party. While it is standard for party loyalists to be rewarded with jobs in most if not all advanced liberal democracies as a rule after acquisition of State power, such persons are invariably qualified and competent.
Guyana under the Jagdeo/Ramotar regime is the capital of glaring exceptions. The practice of bad governance is totally responsible for Guyana’s dwarfed development, corruption, high unemployment and extreme poverty. They are the worst and the most reviled and vulgar of all the presidents.
Jagdeo has become a nuisance to society. He can do the rest of the nation a big favour by just leaving the political scene.
Asquith Rose
In 1942, the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
This is a profound statement and a critical indicator of development such as life expectancy, educational attainment, realization of economic goals, and inter-generational advancement.
Today, children are born into a Guyana that is massively corrupt and deeply in debt. Having taken his/her first breath, that child already owes hundreds of thousands of dollars to assorted international financial institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank and the Caribbean Development Bank.
Guyana’s foreign debt is in the millions of US dollars (more that 70 percent of its GDP) and frequent devaluations of its already valueless currency result in a skyrocketing of the debt by several millions weekly. Our dollar is not worth anything in comparison to the US dollar. In fact, it has been said that Guyana’s currency is not worth the paper it is printed on. It is considered monopoly money by many.
A child born today in Guyana will likely leave high school without passing the required five Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate subjects—the benchmark academic exit achievement for students and standard requirement to matriculate into most tertiary-level institutions. Seven out of 10 students who graduate, do so without passing a single science subject (Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology).
In Guyana, a mother and her baby have a 50/50 chance to survive the miracle of birth. The country’s public hospitals are deplorable and this is why members and their families in the PPP often seek medical treatment in the United States for simple ailments. They do not have confidence in the medical staff and facilities at the public hospitals.
Today, the children of Guyana are born into a society where income inequality is worse than Haiti and poverty is second only to that island nation. Nearly 45 per cent, one in two, or some 340,000 Guyanese are living below the poverty line. Their chances of having proper health care beyond birth have rapidly decreased, since most of the public hospital services are in a ramshackle state, with fewer and fewer Guyanese being able to afford even basic health care at the private hospitals.
The same is true for education, where more than 6,000 children drop out of schools every year and the chances for many others to graduate high school are slim.
Guyana’s economy is among the sickest in the Caribbean. In real terms, Guyanese are no richer today than they were in the 1970s and 1980s. And most of the country’s enduring problems, like its public finances, corruption, high levels of crime, crumbling infrastructure, poor health care and deplorable education system, are the result of over a decade of bad governance and neglect by the PPP regime.
Guyana is where it is today primarily because of the abominably low and immoral standards, thievery of state resources, and the vulgar and abusive behaviour of those in authority. Corruption is a debilitating disease, a cancer of the worst type. It has consumed our country.
Why is this possible? It is because those in power by and large are not a moral and self-respecting group. Rather, vulgarity, cuss-downs and race-bait politics have become the hallmark of the regime. Incompetents and the least of their intellectual apostles are often placed in top leadership and management positions.
The chronic negligence of Georgetown, education, especially UG and the public schools and health care, are classic examples of how the country’s public institutions have been hijacked and destroyed by the least able. City Hall, according the Fire Chief, could collapse at anytime.
Nepotism and cronyism are evident in every one of these institutions. Many of the PPP’s unqualified and inexperienced supporters have been rewarded with top positions because of years of loyalty and service to the party. While it is standard for party loyalists to be rewarded with jobs in most if not all advanced liberal democracies as a rule after acquisition of State power, such persons are invariably qualified and competent.
Guyana under the Jagdeo/Ramotar regime is the capital of glaring exceptions. The practice of bad governance is totally responsible for Guyana’s dwarfed development, corruption, high unemployment and extreme poverty. They are the worst and the most reviled and vulgar of all the presidents.
Jagdeo has become a nuisance to society. He can do the rest of the nation a big favour by just leaving the political scene.
Asquith Rose