The Marriott is about a culture of greed, selfishness and willingness to pawn the Guyanese people

Dear Editor,
Believe it or not, the Chinese workers building the Marriott are not the heart of the problem with the Marriott.
The problem goes deeper. It has to do with avarice, covetousness and a swinishness that has infected the PPP for the past 20 years and most glaringly since the Jagdeo ascension to power.
Winston Brassington and his PPP masters will defend the exclusive use of Chinese labour in construction of the Marriott not because Brassington realized he made a mistake and is taking the indefensible position on it.
Brassington and the PPP will defend this sickening disregard of the Guyanese working class because the PPP did not make a mistake, it intended to do it all along, and it has to defend this act simply because it is profiting personally from it.
The defence is all about the protection of self-interest and profit. This is not a case of a government making a good faith decision that ended up being a bad decision and is trying to wiggle out of it. This is a case of a government that made a bad faith decision motivated by greed from the get-go and always intended to defend it. The Chinese marching into Guyana to build a hotel still shrouded in highly secretive deals is only a symptom of a disease that is rotting out the innards of the PPP. That disease is unmitigated greed without limits or concerns. Greed will cause people to risk other people’s lives, put them into economic servitude and punish them just so a handful could fill their eternal emptiness with stolen stuff.
Let us as a nation and people recognize this PPP greed that is sending this country to the slaughterhouse. These are not the times of the PNC stealing to build a modest house or to build a fence or taking a small piece of land or taking a small bribe that is enough to buy a Chinese fried rice. This is not those days of a desperate fight for survival by many who corrupted to stay afloat. This is now grand rape and pillage.
These are not the times when an impoverished government refuses to cave in to the tempting offers of personal and political riches from cavorting with drug traffickers and cocaine barons because they realize it will destroy the very fabric of the nation. These are the times of limitless greed and in times of limitless greed, anything goes.
In a country where the PPP has paid its faithful cadre magnificently, where ministers routinely get more than $500,000 per month plus lots of perks, where advisors to the President can draw monthly salaries nearing $1million and where contract workers performing mundane tasks reap staggering salaries, thievery from the public and people has actually taken off and launched itself into the stratosphere.
How could people get paid so much, the kind of monthly salaries that the working class can only dream about, but are so driven by greed and selfishness that they are kicking down the treasury’s doors in such ferocious fashion? There is a battle of titanic and epic proportions going on within the PPP cabal to see who can outdo whom with material acquisitions.
In a party filled with the greedy, the race to the top is not about qualifications, service or intellectual pursuits, it is about money. Behind all those titles are the mentalities of small-time hustlers, crooks and scamps.
The pursuit of wealth is not by pursuing wealth the traditional way. No, this band of brigands frown upon and are disgusted by the traditional Guyanese.
Wealth is not to be secured by hard work, diligence, sacrifice and denial. Wealth is to be acquired by stealing or by corruption.
Wealth is not something earned anymore. It is an entitlement. When one develops this mentality and believes he is a law unto himself, it is inevitable that the greed will have no limits.
The Marriott is but a symbol of the PPP disease that has befallen this country. The inclination to steal and corrupt and do wrong things overpowers its logic. As long as this cabal gets paid or profits personally, it has no problem selling and pawning this country off to the highest bidder. They will defend the brutal dehumanization of the Guyanese working people.
They will defend foreign workers taking jobs for locals. They have no problem with Guyanese desperate for a job living in fowl pens in foreign lands. They do not care about canecutters having to go to war for a pittance in order to feed their families.
The problem in this country with the PPP is greed. Development is not driven by any genuine concern for the people or improvement of their lives. It is motivated by a chance to fill pockets and to fatten themselves on kickbacks, corruption payments and outright theft.
Let us look behind the Marriott and truly see what is at play because the Marriott experience will be repeated time and time again in this country. The airport will be built by Chinese labour, the Amaila Falls hydro project will be built by Chinese labour and everything else the PPP touches will be nothing but daylight robbery. They cannot help themselves. Thieves will always be thieves and scamps will always be vagabonds. The few remaining decent ones among them will continue to be spineless.
The problem is unending greed. That is what led to this debacle of a modern new hotel being built in this country and not one single Guyanese is working there.
Isn’t it tragic that even as the PPP’s own supporters leave these shores in droves every week, the PPP is bringing in labour to replace them and creating jobs for anyone but them. This problem will not be stopped by the cabal. It is those who claim they support the PPP and who remain silent to these atrocities who will have to change the PPP.
M. Maxwell