Guyana minister wants better relations with PNP

BY HG HELPS, Editor-at-Large, helpsh@jamaicaobserver.com

Sunday, July 19, 2015, Source 

One of the key figures in the Coalition that now runs Guyana, wants to forge better relations with Jamaica's ruling People's National Party (PNP).

Raphael Trotman told the Jamaica Observer in an interview when he visited Jamaica last week to watch cricket matches in the Caribbean Premier League at Sabina Park, that energy was being put into hardening such fraternal ties between Guyana's A Partnership for National Unity and the Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) and the PNP.

"For the last decade we have had informal, but regular contact with members of the PNP. In fact, at one time we had a youth convention, when members of the PNP helped us to conduct that workshop, and we've had advisors, and so we think that the time has come to strengthen those ties, formally, and for an effort to be made to try and get them strengthened," Trotman stated.

The former Speaker of the Guyana National Assembly holds the super portfolio of Minister of Governance, which gives him leadership responsibility for governance issues, constitutional matters, and constitutional bodies. He has also been given responsibility for what Guyana's eighth Executive President, Brigadier David Granger refers to as the Natural Patrimony, which are the natural resources of Guyana ... including oil, recently discovered there in commercial quantities, other areas of mining, the environment, gold, diamonds, timber, among others.

The co-founder and former leader of the Alliance for Change, the second partner in the Alliance, said that the PNP has enjoyed good relations with the former People's National Congress of which he was a member, and the expertise of members of the Jamaica party was used several times to improve matters in the South American country, embraced as a member of the Caribbean community.

"The People's National Congress, which is the largest party in the coalition, is the brother of the PNP. Over time, however, while relations might not have gone bad, just distance and time might have separated them. But those ties we just want to bring them together now, not just for the PNC, but for the coalition," Trotman told the Sunday Observer.

"It has been under discussion. Efforts have not formally started but we have discussed exchanging visits at each other's congress. I am expecting it to happen...it's almost like a renewal of bonds. There was no falling away out of anything that happened or would have separated us, except for time and distance and becoming a bit consumed with day-to-day matters at home," he added.

Among the benefits of the close association with the PNP, Trotman insists, was the "loan" to Guyana of senior PNP election strategist, media owner Alston Stewart, who was the driving force behind the Coalition's narrow 5,360-vote win over the longstanding People's Progressive Party/Civic, which had ruled Guyana for 23 years prior to the May general election.

The APNU+AFC accumulated 206,817 votes to the PPP Civic's 201,457 count.

Stewart, who had figured prominently in five general election wins for the PNP since 1989, served as Campaign Manager for the Coalition.

"Alston Stewart came down and assisted us with the election campaign. We are very grateful to him and to the PNP for allowing him to give us the support and advise," Trotman stated.

As far as the new Government is concerned, Trotman, also a lawyer by profession, described the learning curve as "steady and steep.

"Coming into office after 23 years is going to be difficult, because you had been out for so long, and so its almost getting to know what you have. We are doing a lot of audits, we came into office with a strong mandate for transparency and to bring an end to what most Guyanese believe was rampant corruption, and therefore we do have to attend to some of that whilst at the same time formulating policies.

"We have of course discovered that the treasury is not as endowed as we hoped it would have been. We have had recurring issues with the sugar industry, which continues to flounder and so we have got to try and strengthen that.

"Gold production is down, globally, and therefore mining is affected, but we are buoyed by the recent discovery of oil, despite the fact that it takes a number of years to bring that to production.

"We have had a setback in terms of the governance, given Venezuela's recent pronouncements, but we are managing and we believe we have done well to convince Caricom and the Commonwealth that our cause continues to be a just one and the controversy is just that and Venezuela has no rightful or legal claim to anything," he said of the latest border dispute with the fellow oil-rich South American state. The Venezuelan thing has dampened it a bit, but we are rallying well and should be okay," he continued.

He described government has being "expectedly difficult in these circumstances", but remained optimistic that with each passing day and week, the country of 83,000 square miles will make economic progress, and the new administration will get a firm grip on things by year-end.

Regarding news of the discovery of oil by Guyana, Trotman said that the people were always aware of the potential, but now that there was practical evidence, the level of excitement had grown.

"It's something that we have always known. You hear about the potential of Guyana ... Suriname has oil, Venezuela, Trinidad, so we know we have.

There have been a few unsuccessful attempts, oil has been discovered in not so great commercial quantities in the past, but the last find by Exxon Mobil suggests that they hit a mother load which is what they call an elephant well, with significant deposits, and so that has infused the population with some kind of jubilation.

Guyana is larger in size than England and the British isles combined. But unlike the United Kingdom, which has a population that exceeds 60 million, Guyana has been struggling to get its population to exceed one million. In fact, the last population census put inhabitants in the country at 754,000.

Now the Coalition, which has control over the executive and legislative arms of the Government, wants to excite Guyanese living overseas to return and invest in their country of birth, in a quest to rebuild the economy.

"There will be an effort to get Guyanese living overseas, back home to live and invest," Trotman revealed.

"We have to do it. You really cannot get the economy to scale and develop and put it on a good pathway for solid, sustained development with less than a million people.

"So we are going to try and attract Guyanese home. In fact, the recent change in government has seen in the tens of hundreds of persons expressing interest. We now have to be able to process those, because its about housing, its about jobs, security and so forth, so there is a renewed surge of interest that is coming home. That in itself may not be enough, but that's the first group that we want to tap into, not only for their skills, but many have done very well abroad and we believe that they should have a right to invest in national projects as we unveil them," he said.

Trotman comes from a family of lawyers. Both his parents practiced law and he has two sisters who are lawyers.

The New Amsterdam, Berbice-born politician's love for cricket is understandable, as he is from a county, formerly a colony of the Netherlands, and briefly France, which has produced some of the top West Indies cricketers, including Roy Fredericks, Rohan Kanhai, Basil Butcher, and Joe Solomon.