THE OPPOSITION NEEDS TO WAKE UP!
November 20, 2013, By KNews, Filed Under Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom, Source
Kaieteur News deserves the Pulitzer Prize for journalism. Its investigative reports published under the title ‘Heist of Guyana’ are of the highest standards in the profession and have irrefutably demonstrated how public policy has served to enrich cronies of the previous PPP administration.
Some consideration should be given by the opposition political parties towards honouring Adam Harris, the Editor of Kaieteur News and Glenn Lall, the publisher of the newspaper for their contributions towards exposing what has taken place under the pretext of major projects in Guyana.
These two gentlemen through their innovative investigative journalism have done more than simply connect the dots. They have provided the bigger picture and have shown how seemingly well-intentioned policies were designed and executed to provide business demand and windfall profits for cronies of the ruling administration.
Glenn Lall and Adam Harris deserve tremendous credit for what they have done and which they did in the face of the nastiest and vindictive assaults against their characters. They bravely withstood the pressures and mudslinging that came their way.
But those who orchestrated the scams also deserve applause. It takes brilliance of the worst kind, but brilliance nonetheless, to have concocted those schemes. Bernie Madoff, Allen Stanford and even Al Capone could not have come up with such ingenious plans as we have seen developed in Guyana. These guys take the cake, because they have taken what most people saw as well–intentioned programmes – such as the One Laptop Per Family Project and turned it to the advantage of their friends and cronies. It would sweep the Oscars if they were making a movie.
The tragedy is that what Guyana has witnessed is no on-screen action. It is reality. Guyana has been ripped off left, right and centre and those who committed these acts and handed benefits to their friends are still around and dancing to their own music.
They are not bothered by public opinion of them. They have made enough and done enough to insulate themselves behind their massive concrete walls from the public shame. What the people feel is of no significance to them, because with their power and money they can behave as if the people did not exist.
The people of Guyana should command their attention and demand that what has been hijacked from the Guyanese under a cloak of legality should be returned, because unless this happens, others to follow will assume that they can do the same and get away with it.
The people have their vote and as they have done in the past, can make statements with their votes. However, the orchestrators of the grand heist of Guyana are confident in their ability to divide the people along political lines so that come election time, they believe that these divisions will return their political lackeys to office and thus give further licence to continue the plundering of national assets.
And so the improbity is likely to continue unless the people act now or pressure their representatives to act. This issue is not about acts of official corruption; it is about the sellout of Guyana to cronies. It is a giveaway that will eventually touch the pockets of every single Guyanese and their children, because by the time the handiwork is completed, there would be little opportunity left for the Guyanese people and their children.
The entire economy would have been hijacked and with it the ability of the Guyanese people to take control of their destiny. Those behind the scams and schemes have already begun the process of taking control of the instruments and media that control your mind. So after ravaging the Guyanese people, they will take control of the way they think, because the mass media is now firmly within their grips and he who controls the mass media controls the people.
The opposition parties had better wake up from their slumber and stop their child’s play. The opposition’s antics in the National Assembly are just what the oligarchs that are in control of Guyana need. The opposition is playing right into the hands of those who are out to dominate the economy of Guyana. They are being lured into actions which can be turned against them and divide the people of Guyana.
And while they are engaged in this silly charade of cutting Budgets, passing motion after motion, calling for this Commission and that Commission, and blocking the passage of laws that impinge on Guyana’s international obligations, the oligarchs are gobbling up Guyana and doing so with rapid haste.
It makes one wonder how serious the opposition parties are about curtailing executive lawlessness, because they have been in control of parliament for two years now and to date the Economic Services Commission has not held an inquiry or even a hearing into any of the scandals that have been publicized by the Kaieteur News under the Heist of Guyana.
Why instead of calling for the government to do this and do that is the opposition itself not summoning parliamentary hearings into the horrible deals that have been so clearly exposed by the Kaieteur News?
