Ram flays Ganger’s leadership of Political Opposition

Chartered Accountant Christopher Ram

At the individual level, Brigadier (rtd) David   Granger has fallen far short of what many would expect of the Leader of the Opposition.

This is the view of analyst Christopher Ram, who in his latest writings took the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) Leader to task.

In his analysis, Ram drew reference to a recent press engagement held by Granger where Granger disagreed with his unidentified or unnamed critics that adequate work has not been done and also disagreed with anyone that the work of the APNU had not been adequate over the last 30 months.

“In what appears to be a poorly expressed thought, Mr. Granger claimed that the APNU had achieved a lot more than has been achieved in the last 20 years.”

According to Ram, there seems something wrong with the framing of Granger’s statement.

He says that it is incongruous for the 20-year period that includes the 30 months of the APNU since elections 2011 “to be less successful than those of the three years, unless Mr. Granger is saying that the previous seventeen years produced negative achievements, an indictment of his predecessors President Desmond Hoyte.”

Ram posits that “The problem with Mr. Granger is that for better or worse he seems uncommitted to any political philosophy, let alone ideology, leaving him without any apparent political conviction.”

Ram said too that he has never expressed an opinion on – whether for or against – the statist economic policies of President Burnham or the market based Economic Recovery Programme by President Hoyte. “And has scarcely expressed an opinion on the Constitution and whether and in what respects he thinks its needs to be altered.”

According to Ram, “Granger’s parliamentary interests have been unimpressive and narrow indeed.”

He observed that not a single Bill has he introduced while his twelve motions were calls for Commissions of Inquiries into various issues including the resignation and silencing of Rohee; the establishment of a National Commissions for Veterans and Heritage and a National Day of Villages.

“Not a single one of these has yet seen daylight,” said Ram.

According to Ram, at the individual level Granger has fallen far short of what many would expect of the Leader of the Opposition.

Ram argues too that the coalition which Granger leads, namely, A Partnership for National Unity is not all that it has been put forward to be.

“For all practical purposes almost all of the political parties are paper parties – the possible exceptions being the Working People’s Alliance and the Justice For All Party (JFAP). Part of the decision-making process for the APNU was a leadership Council of 20 persons but it seems from all reports that the Council never operated as it was intended to.”

Ram said too that there is little Granger can do to shore up the paper parties but the coalition suffered a blow when leading member of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) Dr David Hinds, gave the APNU an F grade and a further setback when the Justice For All Party’s MP, Jaipaul Sharma, resigned from the National Assembly and took his party out of the coalition.

He noted that in March of this year, co-leader of the WPA Dr. Clive Thomas had cause to draw attention to the “great worry, alarm, disquiet and even disgust” by members over APNU’s “seeming lack of direction,” and suggested that proposals by the WPA were being ignored.

According to the analyst, when the APNU and the Alliance for Change took a majority in the National Assembly there was a promise of legislative agenda years later. “I can only conclude that the APNU never had a legislative agenda.”

According to Ram, a glance of the contribution by Granger’s “close cabinet, excluding Carl Greenidge, shows that, like Granger, they have added little of substance to the proceedings of the National Assembly.

Ram said that the most productive opposition MP to the legislative agenda by far has been shadow Finance Minister, Carl Greenidge, who has introduced five Bills and more than a dozen motions, some of considerable significance.

“With twenty-seven members in the National Assembly, the APNU would have been expected to do more – much, much more particularly when compared with the performance of the AFC which has just over a quarter of the seats held by the APNU.”

In his opinion, it has also been very difficult to discern APNU’s policy and political agenda other than increasing its number of seats in the National Assembly.

He argues that a political agenda must certainly be wider than that and must include “how to deal with the excesses of the government, how to confront corruption, how to protect and advance the interests of its supporters, and how to halt the misuse of state resources for partisan political purposes.”

According to Ram, Granger seems has taken a position against public protest which pleases the business community but shuts the door on a major tool of democracy, “and on any protests against the abuses by the state-owned Guyana Chronicle and NCN.”

Ram observed that so far as the policy agenda of the APNU is concerned “this seems to be driven mainly of the weekly reaction to some issue of the government concerning governance, corruption or misconduct by a government agency.”

Ram said that “so far as I know the APNU has not produced a single policy paper, barring its manifesto, on any critical or national issues…It has failed to address a policy on reforming the Constitution, on dealing with Brazilian, Russian, Indian and Chinese investment and migration into Guyana, on hinterland development, on infrastructural development, on youth unemployment, on education, on health and on the less able sections of society.”