Ralph Ramkarran
(Eyewitness) Former Speaker of the National Assembly Ralph Ramkarran’s name got “called” in a rather unsavoury matter the other day. Seems that former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Sir Sridath Ramphal; Kads Khan of the People’s National Congress/Reform (PNC/R), Ramphal’s son-in-law, former ambassador of Antigua; and Ramkarran were all partners in a logging company Tigerwood back in 2007.
Now you may raise your eyebrows that these fellows – not exactly the lumberjack types ─ would be chopping down trees in the forests of Guyana. But this was no ordinary logging company. This one would be performing a miracle in the bush – saving our forests by cutting down trees from the Iwokrama Centre for Forest Conservation.
Sort of like fighting fire with fire, we guess. But that wasn’t all that these normally office-bound types roused themselves to do. They were going to “add value” to the logs that would come from the felled trees. After all, the biggest criticism of the “exploitation of our forests ─ and the reason why it needed to be conserved by outfits like Iwokrama – was that we were cutting trees and not “adding value”.
Turns out the “value added” was to square the sides of the logs! That’s right and if you go on Tigerwood’s website you’ll see them still advertising squared greenheart from Guyana. We won’t ask how much value was added, because we know these office types might not know xylem from phloem but they know their profits. Question is: How the heck did they land a contract to harvest timber from Iwokrama?
Was the project advertised and tendered? Did they have to show they had more experience than Fip Motilall to build a road? Anyhow, now to the story at hand. Seems that Kads Khan, then PNC/R, and Ramkarran, then People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) – in an example of the benefits Guyana could accrue if we practised “power-sharing” as advocated by Ramkarran – sold their shares to one of the other partners.
Kads was awarded $104 million…yes, millions…as the balance on his five per cent share he’d sold. He’d already received $30 million at the time of the sale. The question, of course, is how much of the “filthy lucre” did ex-Speaker Ramkarran receive…since he didn’t even have to utter a squeak. And for what? The trees at Iwokrama only had to be felled and “squared” by locals.
The only asset, it seems, was to receive the timber concession. We wonder why the opposition and its media supporters aren’t up in arms. Different strokes for different folks?
