Comparison is simplistic
By STABROEK STAFF | LETTERS | MONDAY, AUGUST 15, 2011

Dear Editor,

Hydar Ally jumps to fraudulent conclusions without close examination of the facts and without engaging in proper comparison. See his letter titled ‘The PPP and PNC are poles apart in terms of governance and performance’ (SN, August 12). Ally states that the PPP was elected to office by and in democratic elections. He states, “The PNC by contrast was foisted on the nation in 1964 through a fiddled constitutional arrangement and thereafter perpetuated itself in government for close to three decades through rigged elections.” Here is where the hypocrisy of Mr Ally is evident. Let me clarify some history. The 1964 election was free and fair. There was a lot of propaganda surrounding it but it was a free and fair election. The PPP won 109,352 votes, the PNC 96,567 and the UF 26,612 in the 1964 election. The PPP got 45.8% of the total vote, the PNC won 40.5% and the UF obtained 12.4%. Those are the facts. The “fiddled constitutional arrangement” Mr Ally is vexed about was agreed to by Dr Cheddi Jagan himself in London. It was an expected constitutional response from the British given Jagan’s rigid communist ideological position.

Ally speaks to economic and social destruction under the PNC. He is right with the PNC level of economic destruction but he isn’t being honest in his comparison. The PNC ran a socialist economic model meaning that government paid for everything and people lived for free. Heavy subsidies were given by government to ensure free or virtually free electricity, education, water, schoolbooks, etc. In the first decade of PNC socialism from the mid-1960s to mid-1970s, the Guyanese people were living it up until the stupidity of the socialist model was exposed. Further, the PNC barely collected taxes compared to the tax burden imposed by the PPP. So, people had more money to spend and got things for free. Today, they get slaughtered by PPP taxes including VAT and then still have to pay killer electricity bills, water bills, mortgages and high food costs with the little left over.

But the PNC borrowed money from abroad to deliver freeness to the populace. It worked for about a decade before the lenders starting demanding their money and a culture of corruption, bureaucracy, mismanagement, atrocious decision-making, squandermania, waste, inefficiency and low productivity started sending the economy down the drain. That culture of failure has continued under the PPP. Corruption, waste and mismanagement have actually gotten worse because there is more money than ever in the hands of the PPP government than ever existed in the hands of the PNC government. The difference between the PPP and the PNC is that the PPP has collected and spent more than the PNC ever did; all of more than US$7.257 billion in 19 years. The PNC funded its economy mostly by external borrowing as opposed to heavy internal taxation. The PPP is doing both at the highest rates ever.

The PNC borrowed US$2.2 billion in 28 years to try to deliver free services and it only worked for about 10 to 12 years. The PPP has borrowed some US$1.7 billion in 19 years and people are trying to steal electricity and water because the bills are too high. At the end of the day, the PNC wrecked this country but this simplistic comparison by Mr Ally and others is really either an arrogant display of ignorance or a deliberate exhibition of intellectual deceit. Guyana’s economic recovery did not start in 1992. It commenced in 1989 when Hoyte fashioned some serious economic changes to set the foundation for the current economy we see. Yes, the PPP is essentially running Hoyte’s economy.

I’ve got news for Hydar Ally: Guyana is still one of the poorest nations in the western hemisphere. If Mr Ally thinks that Guyana is not a pariah for its narco-trafficking, human rights abuses, people smuggling, gun-trafficking and other abuses, he is living in another world. Guyana remains a pariah state. An election every 5 years does not erase the filth of corruption and wrongdoing that surrounds it. Elections cannot erase wrongdoing.

No one in their right mind could deny that Guyana improved under the PPP. But improvement started from 1989 under the PNC. The fact is that any government with half a brain could have improved Guyana after the PNC debacle and after being handed an economy fundamentally re-adjusted by Desmond Hoyte. Anyone can boast of a trajectory of sustained growth if that growth has predominantly come and is coming from an underground and illegal economy led by drug trafficking. Somebody needs to tell the masses suffering under high cost of living, high taxes, escalating crime and rampant corruption of Guyana’s graduation from Least Developed Country to More Developed Country status. By the way, Guyana’s social decline has accelerated under the PPP. There were more manners, decency, morality and tolerance under the glare of the PNC heinousness than there is under this so-called shining light of PPP ‘democracy’ Mr Ally sees.

Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell

Source

quote:

Written by M MAXWELL:-
By the way, Guyana’s social decline has accelerated under the PPP. There were more manners, decency, morality and tolerance under the glare of the PNC heinousness than there is under this so-called shining light of PPP ‘democracy’ Mr Ally sees.

There is so much sad truth in this statement. But even this will not endure as the karmic laws will ensure.

M Maxwell, don't know what the hell he is talking about. If he is East Indian and he had written this crap about the Jagans that he is writing about Jagdeo then he may have gotten a serious beating at the least from one of them crazy Jagan followers. He could write this crap about Jagdeo because he may know that Jagdeo is not going to get him beat up.

quote:

.. Guyana’s social decline has accelerated under the PPP. There were more manners, decency, morality and tolerance under the glare of the PNC heinousness than there is under this so-called shining light of PPP ‘democracy’ Mr Ally sees.


M Maxwell
Comparison is simplistic
By STABROEK STAFF | LETTERS | MONDAY, AUGUST 15, 2011

.. perhaps to M. Maxwell and followers.

quote:

Originally posted by Demerara_Guy:

quote:

.. Guyana’s social decline has accelerated under the PPP. There were more manners, decency, morality and tolerance under the glare of the PNC heinousness than there is under this so-called shining light of PPP ‘democracy’ Mr Ally sees.


M Maxwell
Comparison is simplistic
By STABROEK STAFF | LETTERS | MONDAY, AUGUST 15, 2011

.. perhaps to M. Maxwell and followers.

Your choice!

There is no future in this country for hard-working people
AUGUST 23, 2011 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER LETTERS

Dear Editor,

Let’s face it there is no future in this country for hard-working people seeking better opportunities. The PPP has created nothing of substance economically. Sugar workers will soon be managed by foreign Chinese or Indian management at the Skeldon ‘white elephant’ factory.

I’ve got some advice for the tens of thousands of those looking for work in this PPP paradise: Run. Yes, run as far as you can away from this country. For as long as it remains in the hands of the PPP, this country has nowhere to go but deeper into the cesspool of corruption, crime, economic destitution, inequality and cost of living nightmares. The PPP just like the PNC offers employment in unemployment. Suriname is booming and it is about to get better. US $10 billion in construction projects are on the horizon in the next few years. Guyanese workers and businesses need to seriously consider getting in on the action in Suriname before the Brazilians and French Guianese get there.

With our construction experience and ‘expertise’ having gone through a construction boom, there is exceptional opportunity for Guyanese to reap rewards in Suriname. Suriname itself has said it will need to hire foreign labour to complete these projects. The Surinamese made a fool of the PPP government when it secured deals to build a major highway and a railway to Brazil, something Jagdeo has been spouting a lot of hot air about for donkey years without accomplishing anything. The Surinamese are actually going to build this link to Brazil. It doesn’t stop there. They will build a deepwater port too. And an international airport in Nickerie. And a bridge over the Corentyne. And 18,000 homes. And when Surinamese start cashing in that newfound wealth, they will need to build new homes. So there is serious money to be made in Suriname.

It is time the Guyanese people start looking east to the former Dutch colony to uplift their circumstances because this hell on earth the PPP has created “ain’t gonna deliver” any jobs, anytime. The vast underclass of the unemployed in this country and in particular its youth have no future under the PPP, which has been a dismal failure. This is a country of the powerful few for the powerful few run by the powerful few. With the developed world cutting back on immigration in these times of economic uncertainty, Guyanese don’t have traditional routes of escape any longer. Look east my people, look east.

M. Maxwell

Source

quote:

Originally posted by squingy:

quote:

Written by M MAXWELL:-
By the way, Guyana’s social decline has accelerated under the PPP. There were more manners, decency, morality and tolerance under the glare of the PNC heinousness than there is under this so-called shining light of PPP ‘democracy’ Mr Ally sees.

There is so much sad truth in this statement. But even this will not endure as the karmic laws will ensure.

So true. But then again, much of the indecency reflected in the PPP supporters in NY are a reflection of what you see in Guyana.

Presidential material?
By STABROEK STAFF | LETTERS | TUESDAY, AUGUST 23, 2011

Dear Editor,

At the Impress Youth Conference, President Jagdeo reportedly listed some attributes of Donald Ramotar that made him presidential material. Now, I know it can’t be easy selling Mr Ramotar as President. Imagine a meeting of Mr Ramotar and President Obama and you get the point. President Jagdeo said Mr Ramotar is a freedom fighter. I grant Mr Ramotar that. He did fight in the trenches against the PNC. So did Khemraj Ramjattan and Sheila Holder. So, no distinction for Mr Ramotar there. Mr Jagdeo said Mr Ramotar’s humbleness is exemplary. Ms Holder is humble too. So is David Granger, an immensely qualified individual. Sasenarine Singh claims Khemraj Ramjattan is as humble as Cheddi Jagan (Sase is pushing it). Again, nothing there to report that sets Mr Ramotar apart.

President Jagdeo stated that Mr Ramotar has exceptional receptivity to new ideas. Hmmm, I wonder if he is talking about the same person I am talking about. For is this the same Donald Ramotar who refused the new ideas of democracy, transparency, accountability and freedom of expression within the PPP, the party he was General Secretary of for some 13 years? In fact, the communist politburo run by the Jagans as the PPP, became disastrously more autocratic under Mr Ramotar’s watch. The ostracising of Moses Nagamootoo and other PPP stalwarts occurred under his leadership of the PPP. So did its Stalinist ‘democracy,’ such as show of hands voting.

The PPP also became a party of the rich and powerful for the rich and powerful by the rich and powerful in more recent times. The poor and powerless working class have no place there any more, except of course, to provide votes during elections. By suspending the PPP Congress, the General Secretary has effectively participated in the cancellation of an election which is conducted during the PPP congress. Yet, these are the same guys who love to remind people of the PNC’s electoral fraud. And the postponement of the congress, most ludicrously, is being done during an election year.

Is Bharrat Jagdeo still open the Jagans’ idea that a child such as Bharrat Jagdeo of poor working class parents can rise within the party to become President? For it seems that this current lot running the PPP has buried that ideal. For in the mind of those who refuse to allow a Congress to elect a new central committee or to face dissent over the nature of its appointment of a presidential candidate, the future leadership of this party seems destined to come from an incestuous pool of rich and powerful friends, family, confidantes.

On the topic of Mr Ramotar’s economic training, Donald Ramotar was never ever picked by the PPP for any economic post of note. This country has had quite a few finance ministers since 1992 and Mr Ramotar was never considered for any of these positions. He has never been appointed the head of any major corporation in Guyana. His stint on GuySuCo has coincided with the devastation of the corporation. So when it comes to economics, the PPP did not show any faith in Mr Ramotar. Why is the Head of State now selling Mr Ramotar as some economic saviour?

Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell

Source

quote:

Originally posted by Demerara_Guy:

quote:

.. Guyana’s social decline has accelerated under the PPP. There were more manners, decency, morality and tolerance under the glare of the PNC heinousness than there is under this so-called shining light of PPP ‘democracy’ Mr Ally sees.


M Maxwell
Comparison is simplistic
By STABROEK STAFF | LETTERS | MONDAY, AUGUST 15, 2011

.. perhaps to M. Maxwell and followers.

You dont visit Guyana nor are you in contact with those who do. So you can opine from your cave in Canada if you so desire. Others know the truth.

quote:

Originally posted by caribj:

quote:

Originally posted by Demerara_Guy:

quote:

.. Guyana’s social decline has accelerated under the PPP. There were more manners, decency, morality and tolerance under the glare of the PNC heinousness than there is under this so-called shining light of PPP ‘democracy’ Mr Ally sees.


M Maxwell
Comparison is simplistic
By STABROEK STAFF | LETTERS | MONDAY, AUGUST 15, 2011

.. perhaps to M. Maxwell and followers.

You dont visit Guyana nor are you in contact with those who do. So you can opine from your cave in Canada if you so desire. Others know the truth.

Your usual wild nonsensical ramblings.

The PPP is only distributing our land to us
AUGUST 24, 2011 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER LETTERS

Dear Editor,

Hydar Ally (“These are facts that cannot be wished away or erased” KN, August 21, 2011) fails to grasp that this land is our land. It belongs to all Guyanese. The PPP is only distributing our land to us. It is not an avenue for political boasting. A government that cuts a dam into a housing scheme and calls it a road after clearing some bush cannot boast of its stellar progress on housing. These places still flood when rain threatens much less when the rainy season gets here. The roads turn into mush. Many housing schemes still lack proper amenities. Playgrounds cannot be found. Proper asphalt roads do not exist. Some areas live in darkness and without water. Yet a propaganda man like Hydar Ally comes here and tells us of the 70,000 house lots the PPP has distributed since 1992.

Listen, none or very little of it was delivered free. Guyanese have all paid something in money, in varying amounts for that land they got. The PPP has sold some of that land for a million dollars or more. If Hydar Ally came to us and said the PPP distributed 70,000 house lots on housing schemes with wide roads, playgrounds, cricket fields, community centres and with every possible amenity entirely free, I would say vote for Hydar Ally. But for these men to write letters of deceit trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public, it is wrong. Hydar Ally and his PPP friends do not deserve a vote on this housing fiasco. Unless Mr. Ally forgot, people are paying for these lots. After collecting billions upon billions of our taxes, we still have to pay for lots cut on swamplands. Furthermore, the staggering majority of those 70,000 recipients of house lots took on massive loans to realize their dreams of owning their own home.

That dream of Ally’s PPP of people owning homes and cars is a great dream to the folks at Freedom House. The only problem is that Ally and his Pradoville friends are not assuming the killer mortgages and the car payments to realize this dream in a country where cost of living is sending people to the madhouse. On top of that, GPL is kicking down your door every month with the light bill. If a house and a car is all that matters to Ally’s PPP friends in defining progress and development, then we will have to find a way to build more cages within those same houses to live a life behind bars as more and more criminals armed with illegal guns try to invade our homes.

Here is the problem I have: how could the PPP try to sell us the dream of owning a house and car but yet they have done nothing to protect us from the nightmare of a growing army of criminals trying to take it from us? If you want people to acquire material things like never before, you must ensure they are not preyed upon or they are earning good money from good jobs to afford it. But the PPP is really telling a lie to the people of this country when they fail to reign in crime, for the party asks people to pursue a dream that risks them being killed for it, even when they owe the bank their soul.

These PPP guys like Hydar Ally believe that selling a dream of materialism and materialistic acquisition is good enough as long as they don’t have to bear the burden of mortgage payments, car payments and loan payments themselves and they don’t provide economic development to generate jobs to make it easier for people to afford those payments. For it is you the individual, not the PPP, who bears the burden. Because if your income is barely rising and the little increase you do get is being eaten away by rising inflation and cost of living and you just got that house lot from the PPP which you paid for and you built a multi-million house and bought a nice car, you then realize that you are being murdered by debt, loan payments and cost of living while your income has barely moved.

Like many are already doing, they will have to make a serious choice: deny yourself and eat less and continue to have a roof above your head and a car in your garage or don’t starve yourself and lose your home and your car next month. This is the predicament the PPP has delivered in its 19 years of ‘housing success’. In this paradise Hydar Ally speaks of, fancy houses and shiny cars while there is still a multitude of poor due to growing inequality. These houses have become fortified prisons to those living within it.

This is not the PPP’s success, it is the success or depending on how you see it, the struggle, of the individual Guyanese. Ally cannot take credit for any of it. Big deal that the PPP managed to get more Guyanese to take on more personal debt than the PNC. Tell that to the homeowner whose mortgage payment is due on August 31, 2011.

M. Maxwell

Source

quote:

Here is the problem I have: how could the PPP try to sell us the dream of owning a house and car but yet they have done nothing to protect us from the nightmare of a growing army of criminals trying to take it from us?


M. Maxwell
The PPP is only distributing our land to us
AUGUST 24, 2011 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER LETTERS

Unfortunately, that situation exists in every country in the world.

PERHAPS, perhaps not!

quote:

Originally posted by Demerara_Guy:

quote:

Here is the problem I have: how could the PPP try to sell us the dream of owning a house and car but yet they have done nothing to protect us from the nightmare of a growing army of criminals trying to take it from us?


M. Maxwell
The PPP is only distributing our land to us
AUGUST 24, 2011 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER LETTERS

Unfortunately, that situation exists in every country in the world.

Guyanese had better start learning to fix their broken limbs
AUGUST 26, 2011 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER LETTERS

Dear Editor,

The University of Guyana is considering scrapping the Optometry, Rehabilitation and Pharmacy programs. In this eye for an eye country where people are losing their eyes every day with this failed justice system and the crime-infested paradise the PPP created, they are scrapping the Optometry program. Every year hundreds of Guyanese people line up for clinics held by foreign doctors to have cataracts removed yet this government doesn’t see it fit to keep an Optometry program running at UG. The population of this country is ageing at a faster rate than it is producing babies yet the visionaries like Ramotar and Jagdeo decide it is best to scrap Optometry, Rehabilitation and Pharmacy. Don’t ageing populations use more medicines? After the giveaway of the Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation, they want to stop producing pharmacists.

With all of these vehicles on the road getting mashed up every day due to the Wild West frontier town that inhabits our roadways, you definitely won’t need a rehabilitation program to fix people up after they are broken up from all manner of accidents. In a world increasingly dominated by technology and fixated on the pursuit of scientific and technological development, the misguided misleaders of this nation allowed these University of Guyana programs to rot and are now considering scrapping them. Instead of writing those delusions of grandeur and propaganda to the newspapers, Prem Misir should focus on getting the same government he so blindly supports to actually spend some money on the cesspool he oversees at UG.

So what is the endgame here? With all this infrastructure building the PPP boasts about all over Guyana, is the PPP telling me it can’t find a few contractors with connections to give them the contract to prepare the facilities for these programs to continue. I mean this is a wonderful opportunity for some connected individuals in with the right crowd to get a juicy $300 million contract to provide some substandard equipment. Are these guys losing their touch? Is the plan to hire and pay foreign rehab specialists, optometrists and pharmacists or will those who just paid 16 percent VAT and a mountain of taxes simply have to do without these services? Do we have to fix our own legs when we fall down a pothole left on a road built just six months before? It seems like the consideration to scrap the Optometry program is to make more people blind to the madness these people are unleashing on the lives on the citizens of this country. Maybe the UG Pharmacy program was denying the other set of pharmacists running the show in Guyana.

Do you know what will really happen here? When these programs are gone and the number of optometrists, rehabilitation specialists and pharmacists are falling, it will be only the rich that can afford these services. The few specialists left in the country will leave their government jobs and set up their own practices. Then it is only those select few who get those nice contracts wrapped with a bow that will afford these services. Guyanese had better start learning to fix their broken limbs and to learn to mix drugs (legal that is) and start learning how to make spectacles.
This is the true tragedy of a country gone to hell in a handbasket.

Yet there are some of the poor and the powerless in this country who want their children to attend this same and only University of Guyana but who will see nothing wrong in voting for these political frauds again. That is the true tragedy. They will prefer to vote for a party that will provide their children a university of inadequate equipment and facilities and a university that scraps science programs. They will vote for the miseducation of their own children. Until and unless these people wake up there will be no program left and no university standing. The dream of Cheddi Jagan when he started the University of Guyana has vanished under the ridiculousness of Jagdeo and his consultant, General Secretary Donald Ramotar. These men are continuing the devastation of the PNC. And they want students to pay for it.

Ask yourself this: what’s the point of paying for all those extra lessons and breaking your bank book buying all those books for your children to become doctors and lawyers and this and that when the ultimate place for them to get that education is scrapping programs because it doesn’t have equipment? The PPP does not care to have educated youths in this nation for education poses a threat to the kind of men who suspend congresses to avoid hearing voices of dissent from their own members and supporters.

M. Maxwell

Source

quote:

The PPP does not care to have educated youths in this nation for education poses a threat to the kind of men who suspend congresses to avoid hearing voices of dissent from their own members and supporters.

M. Maxwell
Guyanese had better start learning to fix their broken limbs
AUGUST 26, 2011 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER LETTERS

Unsupported personal views, perhaps?

quote:

Originally posted by Demerara_Guy:

quote:

The PPP does not care to have educated youths in this nation for education poses a threat to the kind of men who suspend congresses to avoid hearing voices of dissent from their own members and supporters.

M. Maxwell
Guyanese had better start learning to fix their broken limbs
AUGUST 26, 2011 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER LETTERS

Unsupported personal views, perhaps?

Perhaps, perhaps not!

quote:

Originally posted by Horse Man:

Perhaps, perhaps not!

Understanding the meaning is now your challenge.

quote:

Originally posted by Demerara_Guy:

quote:

Originally posted by Horse Man:

Perhaps, perhaps not!

Understanding the meaning is now your challenge.

You decide.

quote:

Originally posted by Horse Man:

You decide.

Your personal choice.

They essentially admitted that they failed on security
AUGUST 29, 2011 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER LETTERS

Dear Editor,

Did you know that the PPP government crawled to the Americans after the killing of Sash Sawh, got down on its knees and admitted it was clueless and completely at a loss with respect to dealing with crime in Guyana? Yes, a government that loves to cuss down the same United States of America at every turn. Wikileaks cables from the US embassy in Guyana revealed this. The US has always offered to fight crime in Guyana provided it can fight drugs. The PPP has always refused. According to the cable, the PPP requested help from the USA with finding some AK-47s, solving Sawh’s murder and asked for equipment to build an elite force. The request was weak, cosmetic, a pretence and a complete and utter joke.

The Americans, British and Canadians had already given millions of US dollars to the PPP for various policing initiatives. The PPP had known all along that these governments would not get involved in Guyana beyond what they already do unless they can target drug cartels. Luncheon’s request did not specify help in attacking the drug cartels. The PPP took the war on drugs off the table. The country was burning, its people terrified and business grinding to a halt and the PPP wanted help finding some weapons, solving a crime and free equipment. The request was hollow. It did not ask for help finding, capturing, deporting and prosecuting criminals whether escaped convicts or drug kingpins. The request itself exposes that the PPP was never really serious about protecting and securing Guyanese. The request was a complete and utter joke. There was no specific request for help in fighting the root of the problem: drugs, the drug trade, drug trafficking, drug kingpins and drug cartels.

After Sawh was killed, the US Embassy sat down, assessed the information floating around and came up with four theories for Sawh’s killing. One theory points to an anti-government criminal gang. Another points to revenge for Ronald Waddell’s killing. Two more theories point to Sawh’s fallout from suspected links to a suspected money launderer and another to Sawh angering the drug lords. Guyana’s investigation was at a dead end in 2006 when Jagdeo approached the Americans. The PPP government did not know who killed Sawh. The PPP tried to blame the anti-government gang. Two of the theories pointed to the possible involvement of the drug cartels. Yet, the PPP never saw it fit to ask the Americans for help fighting drug cartels that were suspected of murdering Sawh. The Americans, Canadians and British will not get involved if drugs are taken off the table. You cannot expect a man to support you if you do nothing to stop those who try to poison his children with drugs. It was simple. Four theories existed.

The logical response would have been to get the players in all four theories from the drug lords to the suspected money launderers to the criminal gangs to the anti-government gangs. Get them all and get to the truth. The PPP never did. The year 2006 presented a wonderful opportunity to the PPP to eradicate the country of criminals of all kinds, including drug cartels and criminal gangs. They did not. By taking the war on drugs off the table, it enabled the drug trade to flourish and enabled drug trafficking crime fighters with full page ads to emerge. The PPP is not serious and was never serious on crime. Because to be serious on crime, you have to be serious on drugs. It is the biggest scourge in this country. The PPP has never been serious on drugs. Thus, the PPP will never be serious on crime in Guyana. From drug kingpins to jailbreak thugs, this country has been caught in one set of killings after another since the PPP came to office.

When criminals can masquerade so freely and make a mockery of a nation, silence can only be deemed consent. After all, it is the duty of government to fight crime of any and every kind. No government should ever allow criminals to fight criminals in the name of law enforcement. According to the leaked cable, the failed PPP government of Jagdeo admitted that the Guyanese public was fed up with their performance on security and they were looking for a response “that captures the public’s imagination.” Now, there are admissions of failure. But this one takes the cake. The cake shop mis-managers took the cake with this one.

They essentially admitted that they failed on security. By running to the Americans, British and Canadians, they admitted those people knew more about securing and protecting Guyanese than the comedic PPP. But they seemingly don’t want these same people to come into Guyana and help crush criminal gangs and the drug trade. The PPP simply does not have a clue on crime and security. They never cared to know how to secure Guyanese. The gravest threat to our democracy has been the PPP’s failure on crime and security. The PPP cannot tell people to acquire the trappings of wealth while doing nothing of substance to stop those who freely target Guyanese who have slaved their entire lives to get those same trappings of wealth. A man tries to build a nice house after saving for years and years and he becomes an easy target in this PPP crime paradise. As long as the PPP continues to fail on crime and security, any attempt by ordinary Guyanese to better their existence makes them immediate targets to the growing number of criminals.

We must ask ourselves this simple question: how many of the criminals in the past 19 years of PPP rule who have terrorized and murdered Guyanese from the drug kingpins to ‘Fineman’ to the Jailbreak Gang were involved in or linked to the drug trade at some point? Ask yourself this question and that PPP 19-year legacy of crime becomes clearer. A vote for the PPP is a vote for crime and insecurity. The PNC will deliver no better. Ensure you buy those iron bars for your home and lock yourself in that cage the PPP has made you create in your own home. For the time will soon come when they want you to emerge from your homemade cage to mark your X for them. The PPP don’t deserve the security of the Guyanese vote. The crime of apathy and uselessness they have committed while dealing with crime and insecurity in Guyana is too hard to bear.

M. Maxwell

Source

Stop beating around the bush – Forbes Burnham was a dictator
AUGUST 30, 2011 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER LETTERS

Dear Editor,

Men like Brynmor T.I. Pollard, C.C.H, SC. should not try to fool people (“A response to the frequent references to dictatorial rule in Guyana”, KN, August 27, 2011). The attempt to paint Forbes Burnham as a ‘strong’ leader as opposed to a dictator is absolute trickery by Pollard.

The same Pollard names strong leaders as Prime Ministers Eric Williams of Trinidad and Tobago, Errol Barrow of Barbados, Vere Bird of Antigua and Barbuda, Sir Alexander Bustamante and Edward Seaga of Jamaica, Presidents Julius Nyrere of Tanzania and Kenneth Kaunda and Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore. Of all of those leaders, Kenneth Kuanda shares the distinction with Burnham as an outright dictator. All of the rest of the ‘strong leaders’ mentioned by Pollard were democratically elected. Forbes Burnham was a dictator. He was not a democratically elected leader in free and fair elections who became a strong leader according to Pollard’s definition. He got power by nefarious and illegal means and destroyed the country with it.

Pollard points to the fact that an opposition existed. I frankly don’t know how Pollard could attempt to highlight an opposition as something to cheer about. Maybe Pollard does not know but the opposition was formed by Burnham himself based on how many votes he decided to give himself during a given election. Burnham took his share and the rest formed the opposition. It meant that Burnham decided the size of the Opposition. Pollard has to be seriously deranged to come here and talk about debates in Parliament during the PNC days. The inevitable reality was that the PNC always got their way in Parliament after rigging the election. Pollard delivers this absolute gem: “It is important to emphasise that the legislative body in Guyana continued to function under the Constitution in like manner as many other legislative bodies in the Commonwealth.” A legislative body functioning under a corrupt Constitution is nothing to celebrate.

A Parliament created out of electoral theft has no validity and definitely not under a fraudulent Constitution crafted specifically to enhance the powers of a single man (the President) above all else. Pollard should mention that many other legislative bodies were elected in free and fair elections. I don’t care which world leader respected Forbes Burnham. The majority of his own people did not. That is what matters. Burnham sought the respect of other world leaders but did nothing to earn the respect of his own people whom he left in a cesspool of suffering. While Burnham may have changed his mind sometimes, he did not change his mind on the most critical issues affecting this country including democracy, economic betterment, free and fair elections, etc. Burnham was inflexible to these demands.

Pollard’s boast about the quality of Burnham’s Cabinet and of the quality of public officials emphasizes the absolute disaster that Burnham was. For despite this claimed quality of personnel, Forbes Burnham still sent this country down a dark terrible hole. It is like the PPP of today boasting of the morally upright leadership it possesses. Enough to create unending fits of laughter. The quality of the Guyanese judiciary is not the reason why Burnham removed the right of appeal to the Privy Council. Pollard should stop trying to spin cobwebs and pull wool over the people’s eyes. That right of appeal was removed out of naked power. Burnham controlled the courts and did not want any outside influence over his power. Brynmor Pollard has some brazen nerve to pen this stuff to the public.

M. Maxwell

Source

It is really disappointing to see how this Jagdeo administration has become swamped with corruption accusations and petty fighting with party members. Jagdeo could have gone down in Guyanese history as the great reformer of the PPP. A man who introduced freedom and unity into the PPP party after many years of the abusive Jagan Raj over the PPP party. Yet I have a feeling that he will be remembered more for these corruption accusations and petty fighting with party member.

quote:

Originally posted by Wally:
It is really disappointing to see how this Jagdeo administration has become swamped with corruption accusations and petty fighting with party members. Jagdeo could have gone down in Guyanese history as the great reformer of the PPP. A man who introduced freedom and unity into the PPP party after many years of the abusive Jagan Raj over the PPP party. Yet I have a feeling that he will be remembered more for these corruption accusations and petty fighting with party member.

Maturity will not be seen as one of Jagdeo's best quailities.
His self-serving attitude overwhelms his obligation, to serve the people of Guyana.

Democracy is much more than free and fair elections
SEPTEMBER 3, 2011 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER LETTERS

Dear Editor,

After being told day after day for 28 years that elections were stolen, it seems that many voters believe that democracy is only free and fair elections. It is much more. Democracy is also the ability to freely criticize government. It is the means to enable open criticism of the actions of government. Such means include ensuring a free and independent press. It covers government being responsible when they are elected. It requires government to act reasonably in exercising its powers.

For too long too many in this land have laboured under the belief that the ability to show up and get some ink on your fingers and mark an X next to a symbol is the only representation of democracy. It is a foolish belief. For if one votes freely for bad government over and over again, it is actually a case of a single democratic act multiplying and leading to a completely undemocratic system. As some put it, it leads to elected autocracy or elected dictatorship.

Freedom and democracy are not limited to only free and fair elections. If one repeatedly elects failed parties and failed governments that engage in totalitarianism, autocracy, raw corruption and every feature of the repressive and failed party and state, then one is making a mockery of democracy. In fact, it is obvious that the average Guyanese voter does not even understand democracy. Because how does a Guyanese voter genuinely believe they are practicing democracy when they go to mark their X knowing full well the consequences of their actions?

Freedom and democracy means more than elections. It means freedom to do what is right, freedom from harassment or threats such as Kaieteur News has reported. It means economic freedom where people have an equal share of the nation’s resources. People have to start waking up and asking themselves whether it is worth voting in a free and fair election for the same thing over and over again. People are entitled to freedom from crime and a freedom to earn enough to visit their family in the United States or the Caribbean.

How does one claim that freedom and democracy are equal to free and fair elections but within one’s own party one does not care to have elections?
The little freedom and democracy we enjoy now was given to us by the Americans in 1992 after they played a role in taking it away from us in 1964. The fate of Guyana’s elections when it mattered most was never in the hands of Guyanese. After a free and fair election in 1964, the PNC came to power with the UF. We got 28 years of them. After free and fair elections in 1992, the PPP came to power. We got 19 years of them.

Freedom and democracy starts in the mind, the heart and the soul and it is much more than a free and fair voting exercise that occurs once every five years. It is what happens after those elections for the next five years that matters most for defining democracy and freedom.

M. Maxwell

Source

My message is all mine
SEPTEMBER 5, 2011 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER LETTERS

Dear Editor,

Louis Kilkenny has that disease which afflicts many Guyanese (“There is no space for a party which substitutes political groundwork for laziness”, KN, August 24, 2011). In the madness of Louis Kilkenny, if a man criticizes a political party in Guyana, he is automatically the member of another political party. A man is not entitled to his independence and his ability to stand alone while criticizing wrongdoing by political knaves in his own country.

In Kilkenny’s mind, a man must be enslaved to some political ideology or group or philosophy. Look, my ancestors have had enough of slavery and indentureship. Political slavery is not for me. Louis Kilkenny is like Kilkenny of the Louis L’Amour novels, a man with a quick draw. Because of this mentality, Louis Kilkenny doesn’t even realise he is is trapped in his own mind.

I have freedom from not supporting any political party. I possess the democracy of my opinion. I have my own views and I stand alone. I do not support nor am I a member of the AFC or any political party. I am definitely not a member or a supporter of the PNC or PPP. I remind Kilkenny that 31 percent of voters in this country stayed home in 2006 and 2011 is likely not to be any better. Kilkenny claims I am an AFC propagandist. Again, ‘politricks’ is playing a terrible joke on fast shooter Kilkenny. Kilkenny can’t separate between a man writing truth and condemning wrongdoing from a man who is propagandizing. My message is all mine. It is independent, it comes from my mind and my heart that loves this country to death and hates those who destroy it at every turn. If my message sounds a lot like the AFC then the AFC is definitely closer to the truth than the other two political parties lusting for power in Guyana namely the PPP and the PNC.

For if there is one thing about what I write, it is the entire unmitigated, unshakable truth, whether you like it or not. I don’t hold back when I am throwing punches with the truth. I am here to fire up truth and to throw fire on wrongdoing. Here’s the truth for Kilkenny. The PPP wants Guyanese to stay and punish only because they want Guyanese to keep voting for that leaking Cup with its bottom fallen out. That is all that matters. They don’t have a problem with foreigners coming in to take over the sugar industry but they have a serious problem with people choosing to better themselves by seeking a better life somewhere else. People must shut up and bear up their suffering and stick around. It is the same thing the PNC with its ‘bruk-down’ Palm Tree tried.

Stay and get killed in this country that is producing more crime than jobs is what these PPP chieftains are trying to tell Guyanese. You can’t leave. You can’t want a good life. Let’s face it: if you are honest, decent, hardworking and you refuse to sell your soul, you can only suffer in a country that rewards the corrupt, the dishonest and the soul-sellers. You cannot stay here and not lose your dignity, your patience, your morality and your aspiration to be better. You must become a soup drinker, a boot licker, a yes-man, a card-carrying party member and morally convenient to survive in this country.

To achieve what is a middle class lifestyle in the USA or Canada or Europe in Guyana, you generally have to commit a lot of wrongs in a system designed to reward wrongdoing. In the Guyana these men have created, a man must sell his soul to stay out of the hole. Kilkenny wants a proud people whose ancestors have fought, lived, battled and endured slavery, indentureship, repression, oppression, hardship, poverty, deprivation and outright callousness for hundreds of years to hang around and take the punishment and suffering. The PPP suspended a congress that blocked an election. Even Burnham in all his power-hungriness staged rigged elections but never completely denied one.

I guess that plus the failed Impress propaganda scheme on the youths are examples of this political groundwork Kilkenny is talking about. Kilkenny should tell us why should Guyanese stay in Guyana? Chicken is $400 per pound in Guyana versus $261 per pound in the USA. Average income per person in the USA is almost 20 times higher than in Guyana. Pay more on far less pay for chicken in Guyana or go live in the USA where you earn significantly more and pay less for chicken? Why must Guyanese who can’t find work or decent paying work stay in this cost of living nightmare created by Bharrat Jagdeo and Ashni Singh and to be continued by Donald Ramotar and punish when they could go to Suriname and work and get paid well for it? The idea of job creation has not been discovered as yet by the PPP. Why should Guyanese refuse a better life of less crime, more pay, actual jobs and a better cost of living to remain in Guyana?

These are the same men who during the Burnham days told Guyanese in general to get out and to run as fast away from hell as they could. Now Suriname is looking to pay people a lot of money for work and Kilkenny wants people to stay at home broke, beaten and brutalized. How can men like Kilkenny possess the gall to treat people like garbage by telling them they can’t or shouldn’t leave for their own betterment? Kilkenny mentions Skeldon, Amaila Falls, housing boom, packaging plant, etc.

Skeldon = failure + foreign management. Amaila = Fip Motilall, enough said. Housing boom = talk to those with heavy mortgage payments due on September 31. Packaging plant = nice empty place for rats to build nests. A few pockets filled while no jobs of substance created. It is not that hard Kilkenny: people must leave if it means betterment for them. Suriname is providing excellent opportunities. The Guyanese people must take it. They must take it before the Brazilians and French Guiana cash in. Not everybody is Kilkenny with his Pradoville lifestyle. And trust me, if the PPP doesn’t get its majority which it doesn’t deserve, Kilkenny and his PPP friends will be the first on a plane to somewhere fancy to spend that money earned in a country without jobs. To Kilkenny and his PPP friends: don’t tell people to stay and punish under your mess. Let them leave.

M. Maxwell

Source

The cables are damaging
SEPTEMBER 9, 2011 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER LETTERS

Dear Editor,

Will those decent, morally upright and fair-minded PPP supporters still vote PPP after these damaging Wikileaks cables?

This is the moment of truth for PPP supporters. No PPP supporter can read the Wikileaks cables and not feel a sense of heavy shame. at least for those who are decent, fair-minded, morally responsible, believe in doing the right thing and see wrong for wrong and right for right. No matter how much burying of one’s head in the sand, these Wikileaks cables are heavy and chilling stuff. The statements are not coming from the PNC or the AFC or C.N. Sharma. They are coming from foreigners; from people who do not care about getting political power in Guyana.

This is coming from people who are fearful about drugs making its way from Guyana into the veins of their children. These are the very people who restored power to the PPP in 1992. So when they speak we should listen, for these are the same embassies where Guyanese, including PPP supporters, line up in the hot sun for visas to run from this paradise.

The scalding claims from these cables depict Jagdeo as a weak leader on crime. It also shows him as morally suspect when it comes to tough decisions and driven by his own misguided vision, flawed self-belief, a Machiavellian view of power and a rush to quick judgement and rash decision-making. Reading these cables, I get the sense of a leader who lacks the intellectual depth to tackle problems from a holistic perspective, one who cannot see the forest for the trees and whose concern with his own personal aggrandisement seems to overpower the ability to fix problems.

It is difficult for the PPP under Bharrat Jagdeo to separate itself from the mass of information coming from these US cables. The PPP’s weakness on crime and the deep sense of apathy and inertia on fighting the drug trade is evident from these cables. The Americans claim that Roger Luncheon who is Bharrat Jagdeo’s right hand man (Donald Ramotar may have taken that title now) allegedly preferred sanctions to prosecution against drug lords. Perhaps forcing the drug lords to donate some food to the Dharm Shala is the kind of sanction Luncheon was contemplating.

The Americans went to President Jagdeo and delivered a message from the DEA (the Drug Enforcement Agency) that alleged that Henry Greene benefited from the drug trade. The President wanted evidence. The Americans said no. The Americans revoked Greene’s visa. President Jagdeo appointed Henry Greene.

No other world leader would have appointed Greene, not because there was evidence against Greene but because of public relations, imagery, citizenry expectations, public demands of the police, the sunken credibility of the police force at the time, the serious aspersions and suspicions the public had of the police’s links to crime and the potential loss of funding for a promised DEA office and a gun tracing unit in addition to millions of US dollars for future anti-crime aid.

Now, the US said Roger Khan, self-confessed drug trafficker serving time in a US jail, proposed a sitting Minister of the PPP government in Leslie Ramsammy as a mediator between him and the US government. This recurring weakness on fighting drugs has meant that crime has flourished and with it terror, intimidation, fear and helplessness.

Decent-minded PPP supporters are at a moral crossroads. The good men and women of the PPP are standing at the fork in the road. They know the PNC cannot ever win an election again so the PNC is not the problem. This election is a moral referendum by PPP voters on the leadership of the PPP. The PPP has encouraged a climate of lawlessness. Guyana has become a drug-nation and a narco-state. Criminality is now commonplace.

For 28 years most of one set of people lost their moral compass and turned a blind eye to the egregiousness of a nation being taken down a path to its own slaughter. We all paid a heavy and brutal price. Will we do the same all over again?

M. Maxwell

Source

Not amusing
By STABROEK STAFF | LETTERS | FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

Dear Editor,

Did Donald Ramotar really find amusing the WikiLeaks cables with their references to murder, phantom squads, anti-government criminal gangs, possible plots to assassinate prominent citizens and a US ambassador, the rise of warlord zones like Buxton terrorizing people, the murder of a government minister, PPP government officials compromised by drug cartels, the possibility of a narco-state developing and the appointment of a Commissioner of Police who the Americans alleged benefited from the profits of the drug trade, the Head of the Presidential Secretariat allegedly proposing sanctions other than prosecution for drug traffickers and allegations of corruption?

Did Mr Ramotar, who has headed the PPP since 1997 find it mildly amusing that the people of this nation have been pawns to the incompetence of a PPP government that has done nothing to protect them against crime? Do PPP supporters who rank crime as their highest priority find it mildly amusing that the PPP they religiously mark that X for has done absolutely nothing to protect this nation?

Guyana has emerged from a non-player to a major drug trafficking nation under the PPP and particularly under the watch of President Jagdeo. Mr Ramotar says he wants Mr Jagdeo as an advisor. It isn’t mildly amusing that a government stands idly by, making half-hearted comedic efforts and refuses foreign help to battle a scourge that has infected this nation?

Mr Ramotar probably finds a joke in everything. But people being killed by drug kingpins, and criminal gangs, and people living in absolute fear is not funny business. For those living in Pradoville, they are protected. They are immune to what the common Guyanese faces who lives a life of fear of crime. They are constantly looking over their shoulder.

The PPP has failed on crime. It has failed miserably on crime. As long as drug cartels remain in business, guns will continue to flow easily into Guyana because guns for drugs is one of the easiest barters in the business. As long as guns continue to enter Guyana, they will be used for wrongdoing. Some people will get guns. They will form gangs. They will start their own criminal enterprises. They will murder, maim and corrupt. As long as poverty and inequality exist, and there is a conducive atmosphere for criminality, crime will rise in Guyana and Guyanese will have to live in fear.

Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell

Source

quote:

As long as poverty and inequality exist, and there is a conducive atmosphere for criminality, crime will rise in Guyana and Guyanese will have to live in fear.

PUT THE X BESIDE THE CUP,VOTE PPP FOR MORE OF THIS.

Government poured so much into sugar and came up unsweetened
By STABROEK STAFF | LETTERS | MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

Dear Editor,

Could someone tell me if we’re really living under the PPP or the PNC? First, chicken disappeared from the shelves. Now, sugar. The PPP always used to boast how they knew how to run sugar. Even in the days when canefields were being burned during the Burnham years, the PPP reassured us that the PNC had no clue on sugar and that if they were in power they would show how to run the sugar industry. After all, the PPP got a massive chunk of its support from the sugar industry. So 1992 comes around and the PPP got their opportunity. The self-proclaimed masters of sugar got 19 years to show us some sugar. Instead we got 19 years of bitterness. A 19-year ‘cane-ing.‘

Mismanagement to incompetence to wastage to ineptitude to cluelessness to hair pulling to now no sugar on the shelves. How did we end up from the guys showing the PNC how to burn cane to not enough cane-burning after every crop to not enough sugar to sweeten that customary cup of Guyanese tea in the evening. Well, ask that guy who wants to be President. His name is Donald Ramotar. He has been sitting on the board of GuySuCo for donkey years now. Ask him for your two tablespoons of sugar. He won’t give you answers but still ask him. He is part and parcel of the degrading of the sugar industry.

While you’re asking, ask President Jagdeo and his family member by marriage, Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud for your sweetener for your tea. These are the guys who built a big fancy shiny looking white elephant factory at Skeldon that keeps breaking down and malfunctioning more than the decision-making process at Cabinet meetings. They built a packaging plant at Enmore that costs more than a bigger plant in Kenya but they can’t seem to package sugar for the Guyanese people to put in their parsad, mettai, cross buns, cakes and sweetmeats.

No government has poured so much into sugar and came up so bitter, empty and unsweetened. It tells me the PPP has no clue on sugar and on industrial development. They are lost. They don’t know what to do. You can’t spend your way to competency. You can’t purchase acumen and managerial skills. Machinery can’t replace brainpower. After all, someone has to operate it, has to fix it and maintain it. You can’t force people to remain tied to sugar when you have broken it and made a royal mess of it. You can’t force people to accept foreign management when you have not trained them and equipped them to manage their own industry.

From chicken to sugar to what next? Consumers are seeing no sugar on the shelves but GuySuCo’s Deputy Chief Execu-tive Officer Rajendra Singh says there is no shortage. He also says the price is the same at $4,900 per 100-lb bag. If Mr Singh’s price is to be believed, it means Guyanese are paying US 24.5 cents per pound of sugar while the world price is at US 28.41 cents per pound. Savings of a whopping US 3.91 cents or $7.82 per pound of sugar.

At least Guyanese-Americans earning the equivalent of $9.45 million per year are paying US 3.91 cents more for sugar than Guyanese in Guyana earning $0.5 million per year. But then again these Guyanese-Americans are paying $261 per pound of chicken while Guyanese in Guyana are paying $400 per pound. People tend to eat more chicken than sugar in Guyana. If someone had mentioned no sugar on the shelves in a PPP-led Guyana twenty years ago, they would have been run out of town.

Mr Ramotar can’t deliver sweetness to this country. He gave us many years of GuySuCo bitterness.

Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell

Source

The PNC cannot win an election
By STABROEK STAFF | LETTERS | THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2011

Dear Editor,

I heard a new one recently. Here is how it goes: things are getting hard under the PPP but it will go from bad to worse under the PNC. I almost died laughing when I heard it. Not only does it reveal the backward thinking that bad is better than worse, but it makes the mistake of believing the PNC is the only alternative to the PPP and mistakenly makes the PNC out to be a bigger threat than it really is. It also makes the mistake of somehow believing that the PNC can ever return to power. Let me be absolutely clear: the PNC cannot ever win a free and fair election or ever return to power in the current dynamics of Guyana. The PNC can’t win anything. The PNC (or APNU or APNA or BABNA or whatever its name really is) is a rice eater that has lost its bark after losing its bite in 1992.

For those PPP supporters thinking long and hard about changing their vote, the PNC cannot ever win an election again in Guyana whether traditional PPP supporters vote for the PPP or not. For that decent-sized minority of PPP supporters thinking of trying a new political party, the fear of vote-splitting is overblown and is a fear tactic. For the PNC cannot ever return to power. The fact of the matter is that it is only about 10% to 15% of PPP supporters who will ever seriously think of leaving the PPP and voting for another party or not voting at all in the upcoming election. The truth is that only that percentage is brave enough and politically knowledgeable enough to change their vote. The rest psychologically can’t and that is just a case of political reality. This would put the PPP at 40% to 45% of the overall vote. The PNC cannot ever get there.

The PNC got 34% in the last election. All the polls in recent months show beyond the shadow of a doubt that the PNC will fall badly from that number in this election. These polls show the PNC is unlikely to get 30% of the overall vote and will take a hammering. Any way you slice it, the PNC cannot beat the PPP even if 10% to 15% of PPP supporters vote for another party. That 10% to 15% have incredible freedom. They comprise the progressive minded PPP supporters who are truly fed up with the nonsense, scandals, wrongdoing, corruption and criminality of life under the PPP. These are people who desperately want change in Guyana.

If you want to look at this purely from the point of view of race voting, Africans comprise around 30% of the population while Indians comprise around 43%. If people vote purely on race, the PNC cannot win. But while both the PPP and the PNC get the overwhelming majority of their votes from ethnic voting, Africans have shown they will try new things. People will not back a losing party and they tried the AFC in 2006. The PNC also gets significantly fewer non-traditional (meaning Indian or African) votes than does the PPP. So, the PNC is stuck in a losing trend. Plus, the leadership of the PNC is a big problem for its supporters. A bunch of dinosaurs led by proven failures like Corbin, Granger, Alexander and Greenidge control the party. No wonder the youth movement in Linden broke away. The PPP suffers the same problem with its cabal of incompetents.

The fear of the PNC returning to power is nothing but a PPP-created jumbie and Anancy story to trap those PPP voters who are too fed up with the PPP and want to try something different in this election. Winning an election in Guyana occurs in two ways. One, a party wins 50% or more of the overall votes. Two, a party does not win a majority (50% or more of the overall vote) but it wins the most votes out of all the parties. Those are the two kinds of winning. My calculations show that a party can win power with only 40% to 45% of the overall vote in Guyana. That is all a party should really get because it creates minority government. Minority government is good for Guyana. What this means is that that percentage of PPP voters who want to vote for another party can do exactly that; they can vote for another party. PPP voters who want to change can change their vote and vote for who they really want to vote for knowing fully well that the PNC could never return to power.

Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell

Source

How do you shame the shameless?
SEPTEMBER 15, 2011 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER LETTERS

Dear Editor,

I decided to read the US Embassy cable dated December 20, 2005. The US Ambassador, Ronald Bullen, himself wrote the cable. The cable said there was a meeting on December 16, 2005 with the US Ambassador, Roger Luncheon and two other US Embassy officials. The meeting was to discuss Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) plans in Guyana. The cable claims that Luncheon provided his opinion on how to fight the drug trade in Guyana. Luncheon reportedly said that everyone knows who is trafficking drugs and laundering money. If everyone knows, why weren’t these criminals ever arrested by the PPP government? The cable claims that Luncheon said Guyana lacks the ability to obtain quality information to complete successful prosecutions.

I have heard some nonsense and some stupidity in my lifetime but this statement has to take the cake. If everyone knows who is trafficking drugs and laundering money, why is it so difficult to get the information to prosecute? If Guyana lacks the ability to get that information, why has it never allowed a drug trafficking force with a history of incredible success, sophisticated equipment and stellar expertise, such as the DEA, into Guyana to get that final quality information to achieve prosecutions?

But it doesn’t end there. It gets better by getting worse. The US said it could provide legal assistance and obtain US indictments where there is evidence that the drugs were destined to the US. Luncheon was reportedly unconvinced with the benefits of legal assistance. The US has already nabbed some of our major cocaine traffickers. Each of them pleaded guilty by confessing to trafficking drugs and laundering money. Those convictions have proven the benefits of legal assistance. Yet the PPP government seemingly remains unconvinced about legal assistance. The cable says that Luncheon said he would prefer to tighten banking regulations to tackle and expose money laundering than prosecute drug traffickers. Luncheon’s alleged position was that instilling the fear of losing business was better than actually arresting and jailing drug kingpins. The reasoning was that fear of losing business would force money launderers out of the banking system into other channels where they are more likely to be detected.

Now, that is utter nonsense. Everyone knows that once drug money is out of the banking system, it becomes impossible to detect in Guyana. The banking sector is a way better system to monitor drug proceeds, because the money is at a fixed place that already has tracking systems. The PPP for all its talk never seriously reformed the banking sector to deal with money laundering. What Luncheon allegedly proposed about forcing drug money into the open economy would have led to even greater undetected money laundering in Guyana. It would have also pushed drug cartels to laundering in the open economy. It would have led to drug cartels investing more of their money in the open economy, which would have given them even more power over the country and made them harder to eradicate.

Luncheon’s alleged proposal was not only inept, but dangerous, as it would have ensnared Guyana even more deeply into the tentacles of drug cartels, who would have moved their money out of the banks into the open economy owning airstrips, buying ranches, operating construction companies, stores, etc. In fact, when one considers that the returns on savings at the local banks are minuscule and barely beat inflation, investment of drug money in the open economy would have made drug cartels more profits, provided bigger returns on investments, and in doing so, developed the drug cartels at a significantly faster rate than if their money stayed in the banks. Bigger and faster growing drug cartels mean greater destruction of the entire country, more compromising of government officials, and more weaponry to terrorise those who oppose them.

The cable claims that Luncheon believed that public shaming is more preferred to fighting drug trafficking than prosecution. I have never heard a more shameless piece of absolute hogwash. Yes, a shame-based strategy of fighting shameless drug cartels. No locking up, jailing, arresting, prosecuting and asset stripping of drug cartels and their bosses. But shame-based strategies and strategies other than prosecution. Luncheon’s alleged proposal to tackle only the money laundering side of drug trafficking without fighting the other side of drug trafficking that includes murdering, killing, blood spilling, gun trafficking, people smuggling, prostitution dealing, legitimate business-crushing and gambling is ludicrous. As long as there is no prosecution of drug cartels, any other proposals will be a waste of time.

Luncheon’s alleged proposals amounted to changing nothing, doing nothing and achieving nothing. It would have been life as usual for drug cartels who operated as if they owned this land. A party of shame that has brought shame to this land is talking about shame-based anti-drug strategies. How do you shame the shameless who shamelessly kill, maim and corrupt a country in order to poison its children and children of other people abroad?

M. Maxwell

Source

It was the Americans who wrote about Henry Greene
By STABROEK STAFF | LETTERS | WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

Dear Editor,

Is the Commissioner of Police Henry Greene for real? The Americans, not Stabroek News or Kaieteur News or any other news agency but the Americans themselves wrote something about Henry Greene. In fact, the American Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) allegedly provided the US Embassy with a specifically worded statement which they wanted President Jagdeo to hear about Henry Greene. News agencies have the freedom to publish what the Americans wrote. Henry Greene is the Commissioner of Police of this country, not an ordinary citizen.

Anything that the DEA says about Henry Greene should be public information given the role he holds, the role he was considered for at the time, the importance of the office, the role of law enforcement, the grip of criminality that ‘headlocked‘ the country at the time, the fear of the populace about crime, the rampant runaway crime situation, the expectations of the public about the police, the sunken credibility of the police, the common public disgust about corruption within the police force and the fact that a number of ex-policemen were working in the private armies of drug cartels. The President has not denied that the conversation took place. Nor has he denied that the statement from the DEA was provided to him by the US Embassy. No evidence was reportedly provided to President Jagdeo. Mr Greene was appointed. Mr Greene’s visa was revoked by the Americans.

Further, the statement to the President of Guyana came from a source with a long history of fighting drug trafficking, a network that spans continents, a remarkable intelligence system, exceptional information gathering, a history of bringing the most powerful drug traffickers to justice. The DEA is no fly-by-night organisation. It has billions upon billions of US dollars at its disposal. Three of Guyana’s biggest drug traffickers and money launderers in Roger Khan, David Clarke and Peter Morgan were brought to justice by this same DEA. They confessed and did not protest their innocence in a court.

Henry Greene should sue the DEA. He should sue the American government, the US Embassy and the US Ambassador. He should sue WikiLeaks. But he should not sue anyone else for reporting on information provided. Mr Greene is entirely correct in defending himself. He is entitled to do so. He has pointed out that the US has not cited any incident or situation which implicates him. The US refused to provide the President with any evidence. But character assassination should be established against the writings of the US Embassy, not against the newspapers publishing those writings.

Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell

Source

Gerhard,

Thanks for highlighting the letters of this gentleman. I don't know who M Maxwell is , but from most of his writings ( except for the whopper that 'Democracy started with Desmond Hoyte in 1985 when in fact 1985 was the greatest rigged election under Uncle Desmond) I am left with the impression that he is generally a straight shooter and a heavy puncher. At least I believe he is a lot more credible and balance than sour puss Freddy Kisoon and some of the noise makers on board the AFC's bandwagon. If he is not yet in your camp, I think he could be a great asset in your corner.

quote:

Originally posted by Mara:
Gerhard,

Thanks for highlighting the letters of this gentleman. I don't know who M Maxwell is , but from most of his writings ( except for the whopper that 'Democracy started with Desmond Hoyte in 1985 when in fact 1985 was the greatest rigged election under Uncle Desmond) I am left with the impression that he is generally a straight shooter and a heavy puncher. At least I believe he is a lot more credible and balance than sour puss Freddy Kisoon and some of the noise makers on board the AFC's bandwagon. If he is not yet in your camp, I think he could be a great asset in your corner.

Evenin Uncle Mara

I agree. 1985 definitely did not mark the beginning of democracy of Guyana. It did however, mark the dismantling of Burnhamism, which the President conveniently omitted when addressing Youth Impress.

Based on his writings, Maxwell does support the AFC.

E'venin Gerhard!

In all honesty, that "dismantling of Burnhamism' was not something Hoyte embraced willingly. Saddled with a ruined economy and crumbling infrastructure all around him and a Foreign Debt that gobbled up over 90 cents on every dollar earned, poor Dessie had absolutely no alternative but to uqaeased to every dictate of the IMF & World Bank. Perhaps his options were a just tad more that a famine victim in the Horn Of Africa.
I do not know what the President may or may not have said to Youth Impress, but what can you expect in an election season? Is it not a well known fact that power corrupt and absolute power corrupt absolutely. Why would believe that it could be any different with the current lot who has been safely ensconced in their seats for nearly two decades. The 64 million dollar question is replaced them with who / what? KUNU-MUNU / APNU ?

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Originally posted by squingy:

quote:

Written by M MAXWELL:-
By the way, Guyana’s social decline has accelerated under the PPP. There were more manners, decency, morality and tolerance under the glare of the PNC heinousness than there is under this so-called shining light of PPP ‘democracy’ Mr Ally sees.

There is so much sad truth in this statement. But even this will not endure as the karmic laws will ensure.

Have you ever pass thru any canecutter or fish monger ville? Manners, morality, decency is Greek.

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Originally posted by Wally:
It is really disappointing to see how this Jagdeo administration has become swamped with corruption accusations and petty fighting with party members. Jagdeo could have gone down in Guyanese history as the great reformer of the PPP. A man who introduced freedom and unity into the PPP party after many years of the abusive Jagan Raj over the PPP party. Yet I have a feeling that he will be remembered more for these corruption accusations and petty fighting with party member.

Banna, many of us had great hopes in 1992, a hope that the PPP would agressively work on the political, social and economic issues they talked so much of pre-1992. It was disappointing to see the deviation started even under CBJ. True the brough back confidence and the economy continued to recover from the lows, something which began under Hoyte. At least, under CBJ corruption was kept at bay and seemed to be taking a pragmatic political stance. After his death, it was like all hell broke lose.

The PPP made some early "forgivable" errors and mis-judgement. We all expected some errors and mis-steps along the way. However, the digression into corruption, nepotism, cronyism is a whole different matter. The failure of the PPP to take the nation out of it's rot has been disappointing. With the Jagans off the scene, I'm very pessimistic the PPP leadership will change direction. Guyana will remain a sidelined country due to corruption on one hand and the PPP's public policy posture on the other. The will get little strategic investment and when they do, it will come at a very high price.

I went from tacit support, to nuetral to opposition in 2011. If they do continue in office, I hope they see the continued mass migration, the status of Guyana within the Region, the lack of investments, etc as a wake up call for real and substantive change in the way they govern. It is what it is, and we just have to accept that.

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Originally posted by baseman:

Have you ever pass thru any canecutter or fish monger ville? Manners, morality, decency is Greek.

For the tens of thousands of cane cutters & fish mongers who have for over a century eked an honest living, educate and instill in their off springs great moral and ethical values that have allowed them to occupy esteemed positions in practically every worthwhile human endeavor, the above statement has to be one of the most asinine - perhaps more so, coming from a supposedly educated coolie trying to curry-favor with those who think that all indians are scums.

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Originally posted by Mara:

quote:

Originally posted by baseman:

Have you ever pass thru any canecutter or fish monger ville? Manners, morality, decency is Greek.

For the tens of thousands of cane cutters & fish mongers who have for over a century eked an honest living, educate and instill in their off springs great moral and ethical values that have allowed them to occupy esteemed positions in practically every worthwhile human endeavor, the above statement has to be one of the most asinine - perhaps more so, coming from a supposedly educated coolie trying to curry-favor with those who think that all indians are scums.