By The Piper
Minister Winston Jordon will now be in the limelight, as he should be. Being the star, however, has its risks, and the Minister will soon find out that talking finance and constructing a budget are vastly different enterprises. Mr. Jordon has a chance to show his metal, or on the contrary, expose his inadequacies to a watchful nation.
To date, the Minister has been mostly general and speculative in his comments. The one time when he attempted to be hard hitting he was forced into a less than graceful withdrawal. On that occasion, Jordon stated that Guyana’s foreign debt stands at US$ 1.6 billion, a figure that turned out to be wrong by a humongous US$400 million. Following Dr. Ashni Singh’s challenge for proof of Jordon’s claims, the Minister had no option but to publicly apologise.
Minister Jordon must walk a tight rope strung by big election time promises and the basic laws of economics and state finances. A few questions come to mind.
Will the Minister be able to deliver on the massive raise for the public service that it touted? Everyone wants a raise, but can the nation afford it? Many workers are expecting in excess of fifteen per cent raises. While that would make for happy faces, it would also add to strains on state finances if the VAT is also cut, the latter being another big APNU+AFC promise during the elections. If both measures are put into effect, and if the slowdown in the economy continues, the APNU+AFC government will be forced to cut services that will hurt the poor and the middle classes.
Under these circumstances, the raise the coalition government wants to give cabinet members will produce a veritable crisis of legitimacy. The APNU+AFC must seriously rethink cutting the $10,000 grant to families with children in school. Minister Jordon has a real opportunity to demonstrate he has both wisdom and courage by pushing back against those in the coalition who want to take away this subsidy. $10,000 to poor families is not a gimmick, even if it surfaced during an election campaign. If Jordon goes ahead with the cut, while at the same time reducing the Berbice Bridge toll, he would be likely charged with helping well-off vehicle owners over poor families.
Budgets are not simply instruments of balancing the books; a good budget must also demonstrate vision, meaning a long term plan for advancement of sustainable development. This is what the nation will be looking at with a critical eye. The one route that Minister Jordon must not be tempted with is to construct a development plan based on projected oil revenues. Mexico tried this stunt under President Miguel De La Madrid’s sexeino when new hydro-carbon discoveries flattered the state into a spending binge. Minister Jordon needs to check the record on that experiment.
Finally, the budget will be subjected to intense debates in the parliament, the people’s house. Jordon will face new PPP opposition leader Bharrat Jagdeo, who has some real credentials in economics. The fight is on, and the nation waits.
BRAITHWAITE VOWS TO STRIP INDIANS OF USING THEIR PRIMITIVE SNAKE MUSIC
Dear Editor,
Kindly consider my letter for publication.
Sultan Mohamed
Writing in the KN of 6-22-15 Mr Barrington Braithwaite in his usual victimology syndrome champions the usual piggyback entitlement where all that the PPP/C did for 23 years was automatically wrong or most inadequate because it did not confirm to partisan African demands. Listen to him bewailing how the PPP/C ” focused nothing (sic) on the wellbeing (sic) of the humanity (sic) of the nation (sic), …and now, with the reckoning with the book-keepers in the interest of the nation, they have the audacity of Barabbas to pronounce themselves as witch hunted ‘Honest Thieves’. They must be unmasked and imprisoned” the on-fire tribalist sounds off. Go ahead. Make my day. The PNC led coalition should publish the names of any presumed corrupt “guilty” and let the law take its course.
Jesus
What Mr Braithwaite conveniently forgets is that by its non rigged democratic choice, the rabble chose between Jesus and two guilty and crucified thieves. Is the PNC led coalition government significantly better? The Jaganut PPP/C also lost and deserved it unlike Jesus. Despite all their skyscraping economic achievements the PPP/C government’s arrogance refused to pay hard working rice farmers what was owed to them. Kudos to the PNC coalition government for their prompt payout promise in their first budget.
National Service
Where Mr Braithwaite will however find sustained resistance is his unmitigated gall by which he can publicly advocate his evil ethnic cleansing agenda. Touting his ghoulish agenda of conquest by the deculturization of those from whom he craves their nirvana-like validation and acceptance Mr Braithwaite wants National Service to be reintroduced. Recently the PNC General Secretary also echoed his chant. Is raping of Indian women to become a National Service free for all cultural humiliation and shame, all over again,always denied but so well known?
Mr Braithwaite boldly wrote” This mythology (sic) of racist fear mongering has to be addressed, and with clinical examination stripped,(sic) exposed (sic) and legally punished, (sic) because its impetus is Evil.” Well what do you know! All Guyanese already know it so intimately who Mr Braithwaite wants to strip, expose and punish while he can be smug about it. When those who are already labelled indian supremacists stridently repel the marauding Barabbas and Braithwaites in our midst, their defensive retaliation will avalanche into a cause celebre certain to forge national unity validating their natural right to survival. Mr Braithwaite however believes ,as he wrote, that their is “A deceptive cloak adorned as a defence in the event of the public exposure of mundane transgressions, (and ) then the cloak of this sinister mythology (sic) is invoked, with intent to entrance and insulate (sic) its guilty (sic) target (sic) group.” The Indian owned KN and its African dominated editorial staff stands condemned in permitting Mr Braithwaite to make an open declaration of war on Indians. Why is there automatic entitlement by some unknown privilege to deny critics the rights of rebuttal and justified defence. This will not endure.
Afrocentric agenda
But Mr Braithwaite is not finished. The Afrocentric tribalist wrote that Indian, are, as he wrote,only “Casting its primitive arcane fictions (sic) onto its multitude who are lured by the enchanting music of this and that snake charmer,(sic) that summons and perpetuates its venom (sic) of ‘we against dem’ through its fabricated chants,(sic) as a survival mechanism, to the detriment of the collective harmony of all, in the multiethnic and multicultural societies they by choice (sic) inhabit, who may be, and most times are, oblivious of how dangerous its venom is.” Herein is Mr Braithwaite’s full written proof why some dangerous Afrocentric advocates in our midst seek to justify ethnic cleansing of Guyana’s Indians to meet their political goals.
National Service Statistics
Mr Braithwaite should provide the statistics how many NS graduates were to later on professionally adopt agriculture for daily sustenance if acquired NS skills bore abundant fruit. Does he realize how dangerous is his venomous charade? The man says ” I must insert the fact that those mentioned (NS) organizations were not political centres (sic) , yet the PPP demonized them to the point of self imposed ostracizing of its own constituency from participating in its skill training, to keep this country racially divided,(sic) to sustain its political existence, at all costs.” Either Mr Braithwaite is out of touch with moral reality or he lacks the testicular fortitude to envision his interests as self sustaining and surviving most free, proud and independent from others. Why do such slave descendants with their own sterling magnificence,completely without need for others supposed vilified decadence, constantly seek to be alloyed or buttressed like there is no tomorrow? What’s wrong or missing from the Guyanese reservoir, and even with his own skilfull abundance of bountiful gift of gab,which can be all, and everything, which he knows more than others, which can boost Guyana’s progress without being hitched or compromising at someone else’s ethnic cleansing extermination?
Bring to the table
What does Mr Braithwaite bring to the table is very clear. His always empty calabash and litany of entitlement woes has no abatement. His is a case with no end since emancipation in 1838 seems to have made no difference after 177 years. His loaded militarizing agenda of many weapons of mass destruction invites perpetual conflict, always threatening by its resort to violence like it’s all his ilk knows or is best capable. Permit me, please, to differ and breathe free.
Aggression
Historically Guyana’s “others’ do not harp, seek, aggressively demand, require or fantasize about anyones demise or absorption to survive or motivate Guyana’s national or their children’s individual progress. Surely Mr Braithwaite cannot be finding fault with “Black as most beautiful” or most productive and compelling to be self sustainable? “Isn’t it amazing that we are all made in God’s image, and yet there is so much diversity among his people?” Bishop Tutu also reminded. Why must a perfect God’s, in all his his manifested created diversity, be subjected to correction by an uncertain Afrocentric agenda when God’s democracy created unique cultural associations and unfettered existence as natural rights of survival most non negotiably free, as is? Who is imposing their conditionalities or demanding compromises to walk into oblivion like all other Guyanese are without equal rights of freedom and unfettered existence as they are entitled to, as well.
Justice
Mr Braithwaite must get off his high horse of always blaming others for his problems which are only made worse by his agitating mission blaming others afar and at home. No sir. Justice or fair play cannot, at anytime, concede or compromise with Mr Braithwaite’s insane demands to acknowledge that it should , as he wrote, be “recognized that for the PPP/C, its most effective bargaining tool to justify its right to power has always been the emotional frenzy of racist rabble rousing.” No sir. Lest you so assume, I do not speak for the PPP/C nor do I seek such mandate. But what is common knowledge is that the dangers of PNC and 2012 AFC Agricola rabble rousing street violence often erupted and usually comes alive by such habitual violent copyright methodology always targeting Indians, always targeting their womenfolk in particular and it is sickeningly cyclical and continuous. Mr Braithwaite consistently seeks to impose his unwelcome agenda on others and he does it by brazen and frightening entitlement regardless. What makes it more ominous is he is not alone. This is most untenable, repugnant and can only be totally rejected with extreme contempt.
The PPP/C is incapable of inspiring, organizing, encouraging, or in any way engineering any race riots, arson, street violence or racial attacks on others like the PNC habitually has done because their ideology has imprisoned them. Where is the convincing contrary evidence? African womenfolk have not been targets of Indian men’s political wrath under no circumstances whatsoever in all Guyana’s political acrimony. The Indian cultural restraints are still intact. It never happened that the others womenfolk were targets of conquest or humiliation. Is there any such evidence to the contrary? Produce it please. What the record accurately shows is the opposite is habitually true where Indians and their womenfolk are routinely PNC attacked because of their race origins and their unique culture. The right to defence forever remains automatic especially when known aggressors are massing in the PNC political machinery.
Human Rights
All Guyanese, by race, by origins, by culture or by religion and birthright have natural fundamental rights to existence and survival in spite of what Mr Mike McMcormick’s biased GHRA traditionally champions. Human rights and cultural dignity are automatic and non negotiable for all Guyanese and it must remain so. Where Mr Braithwaite is barking up the wrong tree is where he is most laughable if he believes that he can pin blame on either the PPP/C or Dr Jagdeo because the latter allegedly “had morally and economically devastated” Guyana. Prove it. Mr Braithwaite is most welcome to fight the World Bank and IMF, IDB and CDB to adjust their economic assessment on GDP growth in Guyana. Best wishes on your quest, sir.
Sultan Mohamed
I beg to differ “blackhawksecurityguyana”( a disgusting long pen name)
The moderators here allow more Jagdeo/ PPPC bashing more than the pro PNC/APNU Demerara Waves online news . In fact, Denis Scot Chabrol does not tolerate anything that is inimical to the interests of the PNC/APNU. You need to read the comments of the many contributors of inews After realising who owns this online news outfit, I had the opportunity to meet this gentleman in person recently-not saying where – and told him frankly about the moderators attitude and that inews seem to be the new mouth piece of the current administration
I am the only comment on this article that needs moderation, please either publish it or delete it, this is sad.
The only Credentials that Bharrat Jagdeo has is that he was the junior Finance Minister Asgar Alley whom was fired in the early 90’s for stealing from the government.
I did not realize that inews was pro PPP, now I know why so many people were making all the comments on this site political.
You cannot make Bharrat a role model or a good example.
Of course I know this post will never get added because I am not speaking in favor of the PPP as many posts did and got added, anyway I just had to say I am sad that inews is still thinking that Guyana would work under PPP rule.