…and Nagamootoo
Here we go again…with Nagamootoo and his promises. And your Eyewitness isn’t even talking about the 21 promises he, his AFC and the APNU made in their elections manifesto. They’d even put a timeline on those…”the first 100 days”!! But then some puffery’s expected during campaigns when the motto is “tell them WHATEVER so they’ll vote for you”.

But you’d think the outrage over them being able to fulfil only THREE out of the 21 promises would’ve chastened them a bit about promises, wouldn’t you? Well not Nagamootoo!! The man just spews out whatever comes to his mouth – without filtering it through his brain!! And we know there’re also some challenges there!!

So here he was in the Rupununi, handing out houselots and gewgaws as if he were a new Columbus buying over the “natives”. Now again, one could understand this tactic…it’s the third world equivalent of kissing babies’ bamsees. But when he promised the folks a PAVED HIGHWAY between Lethem and Linden, he crossed a line. Not only was it clear he saw Region Niners as “natives” …but as “ignorant natives”.

The Linden Lethem Highway, after all isn’t a trinket you can pick up cheap at the big Chinese Store in Lethem. It’s a multibillion-dollar project that has been on the cards since 1977!! It would solve all the classic symptoms of the underdevelopment of Lethem – no factories, subsistence agriculture, high unemployment rates…etc. Just the transit of goods from Manaus would bring prosperity.

And now Nagamootoo was going to build this highway just like that? What a cruel joke! Brazil had been seen as the financier on the proposal that’s on the table of Presidents Rousseff and Granger. With Brazil in a financial meltdown, does Nagamootoo know something the World Bank doesn’t know? There isn’t going by be no Linden-Lethem Highway soon and Nagamootoo should not raise such false expectations among folks who have been depressed for centuries.

Nagamootoo’s cynical highway promise is reminiscent of what he did to rice farmers faced with ruination after his government didn’t fight to keep the lucrative Venezuelan RICE-for OIL markets. Then, serendipitously on a trip to Mexico he hurriedly used some photo-ops with officials to announce “Mexico is KEEN on our rice”!!! Months later, Nagamootoo is silent on Mexico and rice and has proceeded to his next grandiose, but false, promise.

But maybe you’ve got to give Nagamootoo credit – he’s an equal opportunity deceiver: he also told sugar workers he’ll save the industry. Right before they shut down Wales and threw 1800 workers on the streets.
This is one Moses whose promises aren’t carved in stone!!

…but no Procurement Commission
So the Budget’s passed. $230 billion – which is just more than US$1billion. Now for most of us, our eyes glaze over when we hear these numbers. Well just think about this – $230 billion is actually $230,000,000,000. That’s a who lot of zeroes behind that 230!! WITH WHICH YOU CAN BUY ALL THE CARS THAT CAME INTO THE COUNTRY FOR YHE LAST TEN YEARS!!!

And that’s the point of a Budget…it’s what the government will spend. But, as the present government was never tired of reminding us – all this spending can be the source of a whole lotta corruption. And to stop that hanky-panky we need a Procurement Commission. In fact the AFC was willing to have our entire financial system grind to a halt (through FATF blacklisting) unless a Procurement Commission were established.

But now $230,000,000,000’s being spent with not a Procurement Commission in sight!
Just look at who will get the drugs contract!! And that’s only the tip of a VERY large iceberg!!

…and more is less
Your Eyewitness wonders as he writes this on Republic Day, when the Orwellian language will cease. So more contract workers wouldn’t be “less”; or no “sole sourcing” won’t be “some sole sourcing”.
Some “soul searching” is needed.