The ruling cabal has run Guyana into the ground

Dear Editor,
An insight into the PPP campaign platform for the 2015 General Election reveals that the party appears to be building its campaign around the theme of reducing corruption and improving morality, forgetting they are the ones who are immoral and who embraced corruption, refined it to a science and thus ensured it is part of their legacy in governance. Under the Jagdeo/Ramotar regime, corruption and the lack of integrity has become an integral part of Guyana’s heritage. Almost everyone in the regime from the highest political officials to the lowest level civil/public servants and the police force are involved in corrupt and immoral practices.
After all, the PPP has governed the country for the past 22 years during which time corruption spread rapidly and the PPP cabal did absolutely nothing to stop it.  So if corruption is engrained in the country’s social, political, economic and corporate culture; it is logical to conclude that it is primarily the PPP’s fault. They could have and should have changed it.
Corruption occurs at all levels of government and it is now embedded in the DNA of most Guyanese, thanks to the PPP regime—the most corrupt and immoral government in all of the Caribbean. It is not only about multi-million dollar bribery and embezzlement by political officials; it is about the average person lying, cheating, accepting a bribe, paying a little something to obtain that driver’s license, illegal connections for water and electricity and having a friend push one’s appointment to the top. If that is not corruption, then what is? But even more disturbing is the PPP leadership’s constant attempts to cover up for their close friends and relatives whenever that are caught in illegal and immoral acts. Some prime examples are the Attorney General profane laced language in a taped conversation with a Kaieteur News reporter; the recycling scandal involving a minister and her daughter and the ‘busing out’ of the US. Ambassador at his residence by the minister whose responsibility is to educate and discipline our children.
Corruption has been occurring from day one under the PPP regime. It was a PPP minister who entered a police station a few years ago to free his son who was arrested for beating his girlfriend and pointing a gun in her face. It was the president’s son who drove his vehicle and injured the nephew of a popular Kaieteur News columnist. It was the Chair of the Board of NCN who reported to president Ramotar that the CEO and the Production Manager of NCN had embezzled $3 million. These are clear cases of PPP corruption, but no one was charged, which suggests that the PPP cabal and their relatives and friends are above the law and are considered the “untouchables.”
Yet at his weekly press conferences, the General Secretary has reiterated that the opposition has only assumed that corruption exists but they have not proved it. And he and his cohorts will say it a thousand times hoping that it becomes a fact and that the people would believe them and not the opposition. It will take much more for the people to believe them but the truth is the PPP cabal would like the people to believe they are saints and everyone else are sinners when it comes to corruption. But as the whole country knows, corruption, immorality and lack of integrity have become the hall marks of the Jagdeo/Ramotar cabal.
While we may be pleased that the public is finally speaking up and speaking out against corruption and these unwanted abuse of the state resources, we are also worried and disgusted that the PPP cabal is supporting the raping of the country’s natural resources and the destruction of the environment by foreigners. The fact that the PPP regime is not bothered by the current revelations is because they themselves are participants in the corrupt practices.
Guyana cannot develop as a nation if the people continue to recycle this incompetent and failed PPP government that has now become a dictatorship. And while some, especially the business elite, will say that they want to change the PPP and its race-bait politics, yet they are actually working and spending considerable sums of money to ensure the regime remains in office. Only the opposition could restore morality and integrity and lead Guyana out of this dreadful cycle of corruption, crime, nepotism and gross incompetence.
It should be clear to everyone that the country is dangerously close to the point of no return under the current PPP regime. From the brazen and corrupt politicians in the regime sucking the country dry, to heads of state agencies squandering the tax payers’ money, to contractors doing sub-standard work, to businesses feeding off the corruption, and to criminal gangs killing and robbing innocent citizens, Guyana has reached the point where the PPP does not want to effect change or want to see change because it benefits them when the poor get poorer and their friends become richer. The ruling cabal has run Guyana into the ground.
Asquith Rose and Harish Singh.