Parliamentary presentations have flooded the media over the past few days with presentations that are as sketchy as they are vulgar and lopsided. I would like to add my two cents worth. On Monday February 22, Guyana’s parliament was turned into a comedy show with the cream of Guyana’s ( intellectual?) crop displaying vulgar and personal attacks instead of addressing the pitfalls of the Budget—a performance worthy of an episode of a Jerry Springer.
Stand-up comedian Russel Peters once declared that Caribbean people could make a joke out of any event or condition in their life. In this regard Guyana takes the gold! I refer to the gold medal as in the Olympics, not gold bracelets that officials in the previous gov’t presented themselves. Here are some of my observations in the rice republic. The recent budget allocated a 2 billion dollars subsidy to the sugar industry; in addition to the 7 billion already dumped to sweeten GUYSUCO so the country can PRODUCE SUGAR AT 34 CENTS PER POUND WHILE SUGAR SELLS FOR 16 CENTS ON THE WORLD MARKET
Recently, the Minister of Education announced some 4,000 on line University study programs and scholarships. Now this is as comical and bizarre as anyone could become. The country has neither stable electricity nor internet and wife connections. Hell you can’t even get a proper WhatsApp call!
Incidentally, do people want to be incessantly reminded about the March 2020 election fiasco, a 99 year old man who once went by the name of King, a movement that is as dead as its founder and a daily columnist who walks his dog on the seawall ?
Then Guyana’s Ayatollah enters the circus: Exxon must rent and not buy or build properties; a rather convoluted declaration as the country does not have any laws preventing foreigners to prevent from owning property. And his clamor ‘drill baby drill’ is by no means a novelty; this is a decades old call !
But this man deserves a Nobel Prize for (EEE) Expensive Engineering Expertise. From sugar factory, hospital, hotel, hydro falls, bridge, wharf and now the oil and gas project is in the pipeline.
But the most hypocritical act of this present gov’t is the lawsuit the Attorney General (AG) has filed action against BK Marine Inc. of the BK Group of Companies—for it to give up occupation of the 43,966 square feet bond located at Lot 5 Water Street, and all mesne profit derived therefrom dating back to August 1st, 2009. The simple fact is BK paid rent up to 2006, therefore such a legal action should have been filed since 2007—14 years ago !! It seems even corruption has corruption. But BK is no longer Paul the Apostle; for the PPP he has back somersaulted into Saul.
By the way, is the Land of Many Waters still importing water?