PPP horror show: From cars to gasoline to back pay

JULY 25, 2015 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER FEATURES / COLUMNISTS, FREDDIE KISSOON

The Government of Guyana has announced that after the PPP lost power, some former officials, particularly from three Ministries, who would have lost their authority to order gas on credit, used the old system to obtain gasoline from the state-owned Guyoil Company. The amount ran into millions of dollars. Unless one is a complete idiot, then that is an illegal act. How could a sacked CEO, go to an airline and purchase a ticket on company credit knowing fully well that he was no longer an employee with that clout. That is obtaining credit by false pretence. The weeks have moved on and the nation does not know of any arrest. There is talk of people being asked to reimburse the state. If that is so, then it starts a journey to infinity. Punishment of crime must not be seen to be at the disadvantage of one set of people. If a citizen is allowed to pay back money illegally obtained without passing through the courts, then others are entitled to the same immunity. Evidence has been published that while she was a Cabinet Minister, Jennifer Westford, sold some of the Ministry’s vehicles, something she lacked legal permission to so do. The APNU-AFC Government publicly informed the nation that the file is with the police. The police in Guyana are not your run-of-the-mill force that you find in democratic countries. I would say that Mexico is a hell house of a state. I think political theory could classify Mexico as a failed state. It would be no exaggeration in saying that the Guyana Police Force operates like their incompetent, bribe-taking, nonchalant counterparts in Mexico. A mother told the press that she pointed out to the police several times that Rolston Morrison was walking about in Golden Grove after he shot her son dead at an open air party. Morrison was never arrested until Guyanese found out that he perpetrated an orgy of criminal terror long after the Golden Grove incident. He was shot dead recently by the police in Craig. Sounds just like Mexico, a country whose police force most citizens in the world know about. From gas to cars, we now have small fishes giving themselves back pay. This country was reduced to a sick joke by the PPP Government. Persons invested with authority, who lost their legal jurisdiction when their party was voted out of office, still went and used a credit system they had no right to. The question is what then, were they doing with state resources when they had such legal jurisdiction the fifteen years Jagdeo and Ramotar were in power. If a Minister could sell expensive cars, each for a few hundred thousand, then it is logical to ask what else she sold during her Jagdeoite tenure. The Jagdeoite horror show isn’t going to go away. Fifteen years of it will fill volumes. Carvil Duncan, a mediocre trade unionist without intellectual credentials who stole the Guyana Labour Union right under the nose of the PNC leader, Robert Corbin, is the latest revelation in the ongoing Mephistophelean waltz. He was just an ordinary Board Member of the GPL; not the Chairman, not the Deputy just an ordinary member sitting on the GPL board without any intellectual access to electrical engineering or management science. He gave himself almost a million dollars in back pay and approved almost $28 million for Mr. Aeshwar Deonarine as back pay, too. Mr. Duncan has issued a defence that has more holes than a destroyed basket. He didn’t state the name of the person who authorized the back pay. Chairman Brassington and Sam Hinds have denied they approved. The approver is crucial to his defence but that person is not identified. Duncan needs to name that person and quickly. When I read the Deonarine back pay thing, I asked myself who is this guy? How did he become Deputy CEO and is he related to one of the queens and kings inside the PPP circus? But there is a huge curiosity that every person in the world would have about the Deonarine back pay thing. If twenty eight million dollars was back pay, retroactive for just two years then, how much is Mr. Deonarine’s monthly pay? That man, then, is getting a salary that senior civil servants don’t get in super-rich USA. Poor Greece! Greeks are getting poorer every day with austerity measures imposed on them by the EU Central Bank, while the EU funded corrupt Third World regimes like the Jagdeo/Ramotar cabal that paid party boys in the state sector salaries that Greek civil servants wouldn’t see in millions of years.