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FM
Former Member

PEEPING TOM: The Alliance for Change (AFC) has some nerve. Imagine, it is making an accusation against NICIL, and then demanding that NICIL prove the allegation.
This is what the AFC’s stance as regards how much money NICIL is supposed to have amounts to. It was the AFC which went public with the claim that NICIL was conceivably sitting on some fifty billion dollars.
Well, if you make an allegation, it is your duty to prove the allegation. You cannot on the one hand accuse NICIL of having fifty billion dollars and then ask NICIL to prove you wrong. This is exactly what the AFC is asking of NICIL. The AFC makes the accusation and then wants the accused to prove the accusations wrong.
The AFC has failed to do this. It had an opportunity to do so and thus embarrass the government on national television. But it was a “no show,” offering the excuse that it does not wish to debate the head of NICIL; it wants to interrogate him.
But on what basis is it going to interrogate him? Is it going to interrogate him on the basis of what he calls “jumbie arithmetic”? Or is it going to interrogate him by asking him to produce the very evidence which is likely to contradict the AFC’s position?
On top of this, some of the mouthpieces of the AFC are now claiming that persons should stick to the fifty-billion-dollar figure, because NICIL has not disproved it. It is not for NICIL to disprove anything. It is the AFC’s duty to establish the veracity of its claim that NICIL is sitting on fifty billion dollars. If the AFC cannot do this then its credibility is seriously tarnished, and it needs to offer an apology for misleading the nation.

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Originally Posted by albert:

PEEPING TOM: The Alliance for Change (AFC) has some nerve. Imagine, it is making an accusation against NICIL, and then demanding that NICIL prove the allegation.
This is what the AFC’s stance as regards how much money NICIL is supposed to have amounts to. It was the AFC which went public with the claim that NICIL was conceivably sitting on some fifty billion dollars.
Well, if you make an allegation, it is your duty to prove the allegation. You cannot on the one hand accuse NICIL of having fifty billion dollars and then ask NICIL to prove you wrong. This is exactly what the AFC is asking of NICIL. The AFC makes the accusation and then wants the accused to prove the accusations wrong.
The AFC has failed to do this. It had an opportunity to do so and thus embarrass the government on national television. But it was a “no show,” offering the excuse that it does not wish to debate the head of NICIL; it wants to interrogate him.
But on what basis is it going to interrogate him? Is it going to interrogate him on the basis of what he calls “jumbie arithmetic”? Or is it going to interrogate him by asking him to produce the very evidence which is likely to contradict the AFC’s position?
On top of this, some of the mouthpieces of the AFC are now claiming that persons should stick to the fifty-billion-dollar figure, because NICIL has not disproved it. It is not for NICIL to disprove anything. It is the AFC’s duty to establish the veracity of its claim that NICIL is sitting on fifty billion dollars. If the AFC cannot do this then its credibility is seriously tarnished, and it needs to offer an apology for misleading the nation.

This took place quite some time ago 

FM

Peeper needs to start looking instead of peeping and it would serve him well. How the hell can one prove without existent records that a specific estimate is correct or not? One can only go with the available date. To say the AFC has to prove what a holding company is obliged to report is not only monumentally stupid bur the reason the company is robbing us in the first place. Ignoramuses as this prick allows it the latitude to obfuscate and detract from its obligation while it convert our nations assets into the private properties of political operatives.

FM
PPP/C looked like Muhammad Ali during NICIL debatePDFPrintE-mail
Written by PETER BROWNE   
Wednesday, 23 May 2012 21:11
I WATCHED in amazement as the NICIL debate got underway in the studios of NCN with Michael Gordon, as moderator, and a panel which  included the Minister of Finance Dr. Ashni Singh; NICIL”s CEO Winston Brassington; chartered accountant  and TV host Christopher Ram; Kaieteur News publisher Glenn Lall and his editor-in-chief, Adam Harris.
Great show and kudos to all those responsible for the initiative  and the end product.
But the show had to go on  without the ‘no show’ rock stars, the ones who kept pressing charges of corruption and mismanagement of NICIL by Brassington, accusations of a $50B, placed somewhere in an account , somewhere over the rainbow.
What happened to AFC’s Ramjattan and Nagamootoo?
I repeated in a letter addressed to the editor a few days ago, that these two are cowards. The debate was not the best in the world, but the civility in which these people of opposite sides conducted themselves, must be admired, as well as the commended efforts of Michael Gordon.
NICIL’s Brassington, quiet for most of the night’s proceedings, finally called upon by the moderator, referred to the accusations of, and especially  directed to the AFC, as ‘jumbie Arithmetic’, since they, the opposition, cannot come up with one shred of  loaded  evidence, regarding the $50B.
Adam Harris and his bossman tried to get cute with both the Finance Minister and Brassington, asking a basic question, getting a basic answer, but using drama, like Ram, to express his importance to his boss and as a late-entry member  of the panel discussions. Of course, he was invited to sit in, because of a question posed to Glenn Lall, who offered a direct answer through his editor.
I think the forthcoming answers from the minister and Brassington, confused Christopher Ram, to the point where he was stressing, and showed his discontentment. These people are just plain and simple, ‘PPP/C Haters’.
He asked questions, got satisfactory answers, but because these people have it in for the PPP/C Government, not a single explanation was good enough for him, nor Lall. For the benefit of those who might not be aware, all info regarding NICIL are available to the public, yet the same information was totally disregarded by the AFC.
They, Ramjattan and Nagamootoo were disappointed that the corner which they  forced the PPP/C into or thought they had, was not tight enough for the PPP/C, who danced elegantly out of the way of accusations continuously thrown at them. But like the world’s greatest heavyweight boxer of all time , Muhammad Ali, that’s how the PPP/C  looked, in the eyes of the public on NCN Tuesday night.
The Finance Minister did a class act, I would say. The man maintained his composure throughout, while Ram and Lall seemed excited and emotional, for the most part.
Dr. Luncheon is a stalwart in the truest sense of the word. I loved his style, the way he handled Lall and even Ram, with kids’ gloves, reminding Lall that his paper still stinks, in the most diplomatic form of course.
Dr. Luncheon is not a pushover, nor is he a stranger to the type of politics played out by all the opposition parties, now and in the past. Ramjattan and Nagamootoo were both saved by the bell Tuesday night. The referee, in this case the moderator, would have had to come to their rescue, all night long. Guaranteed!
FM

 If you fight yourself you can characterize your fighting self in as glowing terms as you can. NICIL directors did not account for our cash or offer reasons why they did not do so in close to 10 years. As managers of what is not their own one can only hazard a guess that they are bumbling idiots. I take them at their words that they are smart so the only reason they do not have any transparent accounting of what happened to the nations assets is because they are consummate crooks.

FM

May 30, 2012    

No more 'Jim Cock Bring Ram Goat' excuses

Mr Friend,


Firstly we must thank NCN for opening the door to the opposition for TV time, but it will be fruitless to debate unless we get the draft accounts and the cooperation agreement with NICIL and the PU.  Let us make it clear, we have a methodology as to how we arrived at the missing $50 billion figure and it is furthest from the truth what the NICIL Board members are trying to portrait.  But to protect our sources we have to "stan easy for now".  More to come later!

So this $50 billion figure is no "pie in the sky figure" and we ask the Guyanese people to stay with this figure because the NICIL Board is yet to provide tangible evidence to the public.  The time is soon approaching when they will have to either "put up or go to jail".  We presume they will try a Henry Greene on the legal system when their time arrives.  So much for justice in Guyana!
We know that there is a culture of secrecy surrounding NICIL operations, but in the gallery of public opinion, we are convinced in our conviction that Guyanese are predisposed that much is wrong with NICIL's financial transactions and unless the Ramotar administration fixes this situation promptly, expect the beginning of the end. NICIL will be its Achilles' heel.

The public debate at NCN has revealed that NICIL has US$3.5 million in cash but is committing US$19 million to the Marriott Hotel.  Where is the difference (US$15.5 million) coming from?  That debate confirmed that the NICIL Board has no problem with the real conflict of interest with a wife auditing a husband, and its CEO purchasing shares for his brother who resides in the U.S.  How more bizarre can this get?

Nothing has changed in this minority regime-nepotism, discrimination, patronage, and wanton corruption are still the order of the day. The new culture of "it's our time now in the PPP to tek" is very much alive and well. When will the tekking end in the PPP?
This nation is in crisis morally, spiritually, economically and socially.  We were all under the impression that with the change in Government, the PPP would have swept the Jagdeo regime under the carpet and cleaned up its act.  But we are baffled at the energy being poured into maintaining the Jagdeo status quo.

The public record of the PPP administration's statements and utterances on NICIL and other slush funds revealed a disturbing trend of apparent deliberate misinformation. As if this was not bad enough, the Attorney General claimed that NICIL operated within the law and he sees no conflict of interest.
Did Jonathan Brassington benefit from insider information?

The moral crisis gets worse when the Guyanese public learned that one  Jonathan Brassington was the beneficiary of a $225 million deal in Hand-in-Hand Trust soon after his brother, Winston Brassington, privatized that entity. This transaction reminds us of RAJ RAJARATNAM (the Bangladesh stock broker jailed in the US) who was found guilty of conspiracy and securities fraud crimes stemming from his involvement in insider trading in the United States.

Although some would have us believe that NICIL has only $700 million in cash and that all its transactions were legal, we in the AFC are not buying their "JIM COCK BRING RAM GOAT" story. We will continue to sensitize and educate the people, particularly the poor and the working class that it is the ultimate responsibility of the minority PPP regime to tell the nation what has happened to the remaining $49.3 billion. They ought not to shy away from their obligation. This is their moral responsibility.

With $50 billion of taxpayers' money unaccounted for, with sugar production just over 60 percent of its target for the first quarter of 2012, and with no economic development plan aimed at creating jobs for the youths, the minority PPP regime has forfeited its right to govern.
It must be made unequivocally clear that if voluntary compliance is not enough to get the board of directors of NICIL to tell the truth about the missing $50 billion, then Parliament and the opposition must act to ensure that the enablers are held legally accountable for the reckless misuse and squander of the taxpayers' money.
Only then will this delinquent behaviour of merely covering up for the "big fishes" will come to an end. Today, the poor and the working class whom the PPP has abandoned are the by-products of a vicious cycle-a cycle of theft, corruption and fraud which has been fortified by the regime-a regime that has not demonstrated the political will to effect change.

Sadly, the poor and the working class are left to fend for them selves and as they become poorer, the "big fishes" in the PPP are getting richer. One only has to reflect on the Stabroek News editorial of May 24, 2012 to get a reality check of what is happening in Guyana.
Let us use this opportunity to remind the Guyanese public that the World Bank's Governance Indicators reflect that the PPP Government has a serious problem with corruption.

The reason is that in the past, the police have not demonstrated the will to touch the "untouchables," so doubts will linger as to whether they have now developed the capacity to do so.
Can the people rely on the police to do their job? Only time will tell. Good intentions and political will may serve to arouse a perception of public interest, but that may be as far as it goes. It's going to be interesting to see what happens.

 

Yours faithfully,
Dr Asquith Rose and Sasenarine Singh

Mitwah

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