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Kaieteur News
Kaieteur News Printed and Published by National Media & Publishing Company Ltd. 24 Saffon Street, Charlestown, Georgetown, Guyana. Publisher: GLENN LALL Editor: Adam Harris Tel: 225-8465, 225-8491. Fax: 225-8473, 226-8210
EDITORIAL
When no one is exempt from the law The Pope is the head of the Roman Catholic Church. He is perhaps the most important religious leader in the world. He is so powerful that up until an English King, Henry VIII who wanted to get married after divorcing an earlier wife, no one could divorce. It was the very early 16th Century. King Henry later sought to have the marriage to Anne Boleyn annulled. At the time the Pope was Pope Clement VII who refused to grant the King divorce, thus forcing Catholic England to become Protestant to this day. Despite that break, the Pope remained the religious leader with the largest following. He is so great and revered that at the time of his death there is no postmortem; he presides over his own country which is the Vatican City; he is an international powerbroker as was demonstrated during the World Wars; he has his own army and his security detail is better than that provided for most heads of government. Arguably, he is the most powerful man on earth. When he speaks world leaders listen. Usually he dies in office but in this case he has opted to demit office because as he claims, he cannot cope with the pressures of work. And it is here that the world will suddenly see the pope as a human being. Now there is talk of prosecuting him because he is accused of withholding information on the priests who sodomised young boys. This was a scandal that rocked the church to its core. Many priests were defrocked but most were simply shifted around to continue with the molestation. The criminal prosecutors are now going after the pope. Another powerful man who walks the earth is the president of the United States. But even he is not immune from prosecution. One President, Richard Nixon was almost impeached for breaching the law as it pertained to spying on his opposition. That became known as the Watergate Scandal. The president had to demit office. On a lesser scale millionaires have gone to jail. In the Caribbean there was Alan Stanford who is still in jail facing the prospect of never walking among free men again. Bernard Madoff is serving a sentence that guarantees that he will never leave jail. Long is the list of prominent people who have gone to jail. In Guyana there was the remigrant officer who was made to face the courts but he died before he could go to trial; there was the Minister who died not long after he was found guilty of malfeasance in public office; there was the Deputy Chief Education Officer who served five years in jail for exercise book fraud. However, all that happened nearly four decades ago. But it continues to happen in other countries where no one is above the law. People are sanctioned. A man behaves like a boor on an aircraft just this week because a baby happened to be crying. He is out of a job and he faces prosecution. It matters not what he might be or who he might know. Should this be the case in Guyana the country would be so much better off because people in public office would then work for the people they are hired to serve. If they dare to demand bribes then they know that once caught they would be destroyed. They would be better persons. We have had cases of Government officials discharging loaded firearm that were not even being properly investigated. The police would say that he is closely connected to the government. The same official is involved in a vehicular accident that leaves a man crippled. Again faulty investigation leads to the victim being identified as the person in the wrong. The modus of arresting the driver in an accident and even detaining him overnight or for days is waived here. An official is accused of being involved in a remigrant fraud; he is sent on leave and later returned to his job. People are caught in the midst of a fraud and are transferred as was the case of two Regional Executive Officers who continued with their fraudulent activities. In Guyana some people are above the law.
Thursday February 21, 2013
Letters... Where your views make the news Letters...
Foreign governments and businesses are reaping two sweet out of one joint DEAR EDITOR, On this matter of giving away our jobs, the people are heavily relying on the media to hold the government accountable because the government wishes it didn’t have to answer to us. It is unfortunate the PPP has sunk to a new low in an effort to wriggle out of selling our birthright to foreigners. The PPP should be asked to provide the law and migrant convention highlighting the sections allowing a government to hire foreign workers in preference of nationals when such jobs were not advertised or the local population denied priority. Were they asked to do this, they would be singing a different tune. Even though the government claims it has a policy to attract skills, it needs to tell us what skills it is seeking to attract that we do not have. This government can only think and function best when it cries racism and creates smokescreens to hide its nefarious actions. It is arrant nonsense on the part of Gail Teixeira and Anil Nandlall to accuse Guyanese of racism and anti-nationalism when all we are demanding is the right to work and as Guyanese, we be given preferential treatment. If the PPP is using the race and anti-national tactics in their bottom-house meetings
I hope their supporters are not allowing the party’s bigwigs to insult their intelligence by having them feel it is okay for their families to be unemployed when their money is being used to fund these projects. Being pro-Guyanese does not make us racist or antinational and there are Guyanese of Chinese extraction whom we share a relationship of camaraderie, and of which the PPP is now trying to manufacture a division. The only anti-national here is the PPP government who is clearly showing it doesn’t care about Guyana and Guyanese and is not ashamed to cry wolf when it is garbed in the outfit. If the other projects may have escaped public scrutiny or outcries as is happening now does not make the situation right. It is scary the PPP makes claim to an immigration policy that allows it to attract overseas skills already existing in Guyana and pay out our money to foreigners, but they have no immigration policy that would see Guyanese going and work in certain industries and return their earnings to Guyana. How convenient that the government ignores this policy utlised by sister CARICOM countries in the hotel and agriculture industries. To the government’s point that
Guyanese are working overseas, these workers are working under different categories. They were forced to migrate because there are no jobs or they had to work under poor conditions, normal migration, transferred technology, CSME free movement of skills, or doing jobs the host countries’ workers refuse to. Have the PPP show us how many projects, if any, that are funded by the taxpayers of Russia, China and India and their governm e n t s g a v e f i r s t p r e f e rence to foreigners when their people are willing and able to do the jobs. This is the crux of the matter. It is made even more glaring when you look at the ratio of
Guyanese needing jobs or have the skills to do the job a n d are being denied opportunities to work compared to those that are being imported to do the jobs funded by Guyanese. The foreign governments and businesses are reaping two sweet out of one joint. They are making sure a hefty sum of the money they loan Guyana sees immediate repatriation by having their people do the jobs and later having Guyanese repay the loans. The government needs to stop its embarrassing excuses and selling out our birthright for a few pieces of silver in somebody’s pocket. Leslie Gonsalves President, GB&GWU and Region 10 Councillor
Anti-corruption measures taken by Chinese authorities DEAR EDITOR, A Reuters story caught my attention which I thought of sharing with readers. It has to do with anti-corruption measures taken by Chinese authorities, which included a ban on advertisements for expensive gifts such as watches and jewellery as part of a push by the government to crackdown on extravagance and waste. Such advertisements, officials felt, ‘publicized incorrect values and helped create a bad social ethos’. Only recently, the Chinese government banned civil servants from splurging on boozy banquets and fancy cars and from accepting costly gifts. Hydar Ally