Mr. Jagdeo, more than any other Guyanese politician, knows corruption, cronyism and thievery when he sees it. For twelve consecutive years he was mired in the putrefying stench of embezzlement and gross dishonesty, Therefore, I totally and completely believe him when he says that the Parking Meter deal is designed to fund the PNC’s political campaign. Jagdeo knows a rat when he smells one. Jagdeo knows that the Granger-led administration is using the parking meter to rob the tax payers and fun their campaign. That is exactly what the PPP did when they were in power.
The Berbice Bridge embezzlement scheme that the taxpayers are now subsidizing, is one such parallel. That single project saw billions of dollars going into the coffers of Jagdeo’s friends. They are still blinking the country by tens of millions of dollars every year. The Marriott Hotel is another such scheme. The tax payers lost billions of dollars that went into the pockets of the cronies of the PPP. Please be reminded that for all the millions spent, that project is still incomplete. Then we have the failed Amelia Falls Project, which saw another set of money, amounting to tens of billions, being directly funneled into the bank accounts of those favored by my Jagdeo.
So I honestly believe Jagdeo when he says that the Granger-led administration is engaging is the same kinds of dishonest behaviors as the PPP. Not because you have a dislike for a person it means that the person is always wrong. Even a fool could be right sometimes. So this time, Jagdeo is correct in his observation. What the United Republican Party (URP) would like you to note, is that the two parties are playing the Guyanese people for fools.
Jadgeo just about run this country off the Transparency International scale with the rampant corruption that was taking place under his watch. Guyana is the worse Caribbean country, based on every single index that is used to gauge countries. We are always the most corrupt, the least transparent and the most backwards of our Caribbean neighbors. This has been Guyana’s legacy for almost as long as we were an independent nation. Hands down, our politicians are the biggest thieves in the Caribbean. However, during the Jagdeo’s reign, we got seismically worse.
Therefore what Jagdeo is doing, in highlighting Granger’s crookedness, is political genius. If Jagdeo fingers Granger, then his own crookishness becomes less blatant than Granger’s crookishness. The fact is that none of these political figures can honestly declare that either is innocent of the charges against them. Jagdeo is noting the BK trickery, Norton’s Bond fraud, the Jubilee Park scam, the Fiber optic Cable deceit and the ever mounting cases of direct robbery of the citizens of this country. And he (Jagdeo), is just annoyed that the PNC has their hands on the levers that allow them to get the kinds of kickbacks that the PPP was accustomed to.
So the interest that Jagdeo is showing, by highlighting the Granger-led administration’s current behavious, is not born out of patriotism or out of some genuine concern for the people of Guyana. What Jagdeo is doing is creating a situation for the PNC-Coalition to be adjudged as, just as corrupt as the PPP. Then the elections will not be on the issues facing Guyana but rather on who is more corrupt than whom. The PPP lost largely because they are a corrupt party. If Jagdeo can show that the PNC-Coalition is also as corrupt, then he stands a real chance of getting his hands back on the country’s money.
Does any Guyanese really think that the PPP and the PNC-Coalition are any different? Does any Guyanese really believe that these two parties have the full development of the country at heart? Most of the Guyanese politicians are not a bunch of self-serving autocrats? The URP believes that Guyana and Guyanese deserve better. These two parties have proven that they cannot be allowed to operate without parliamentary checks and balances. They have proven that none of them will do right by Guyana. Administratively, it is not in their nature.