Government will continue to bail out M&CC

Government will continue to inject financial aid into City Hall towards the improvement of the city and its environs. 

President Bharrat Jagdeo made this announcement during a press conference on Tuesday October 4 at the Office of the President.

He said, “I think we have to do this and we will assist the city; it is not Hamilton Green’s city, anything good will have to come without his being involved.” 

The President emphasised that the government will continue to lend its support towards City Hall, in recognition of the fact that the city belongs to all citizens; and as such, the Administration continues to invest large sums towards its enhancement.

“The government will be supportive, we don’t have a choice, this is our city, we cannot say that it is run by Hamilton Green or the PNC, so we don’t pay attention to it, this is why we have pumped so much money into the city,” Jagdeo stated.

Testimony to this, he revealed, is the $500M presently being invested by Central Government for road improvement works around the city. 

President Jagdeo also pointed out that every single road in the city built over the last 15 years was funded by the Central Government.

As for other investments made towards the enhancement and general improvement of the city, he said, “We just bought some garbage trucks to give to City Hall; hopefully that will make a difference. Then we have the new dump site (located at Eccles); thankfully the people in South Georgetown could be relieved. We now have a modern landfill site.”

The Head of State acknowledged that there are still a lot of things left to be done, and expressed confidence that there are some “excellent people” within City Hall who could make a difference.

President Jagdeo, in August of this year, offered a financial bailout, amounting to $215M, to the City Council, to relieve the council of its ongoing financial woes, and to enable the municipality to meet outstanding liabilities, including wages owed to staff and amounts due to garbage collectors for several months.

He announced that the government will be paying $80M in rates and taxes to the Council, in addition to which $120M will be injected into the municipality to help meet its outstanding liabilities and to accelerate its efforts to keep the city clean.

And a further $15 million will be provided by the Central Government to the City Council for cleaning up Le Repentir Cemetery.

President to announce elections date soon

Head of State President Bharrat Jagdeo said, on Tuesday October 4, now that he has been informed by the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) as to the status quo of the Official List of Electors – or Voters’ List – he will announce the date of elections “within a week.”

President Bharrat Jagdeo says he will announce the date of elections within a week from October 4.

He made the announcement about ‘the big announcement’ at a press briefing held at the Office of the President on Tuesday.

The President told reporters that GECOM sent him a letter, in which the Commission detailed its readiness for the holding of the upcoming polls. The letter reads: “Excellency, please be advised that the Official List of Electors has been prepared in accordance with the National Registration Act Chapter 19:08, the Registration of the People Act 103, the Elections Laws Amendment Act number 15 of 2000.

“Please be further informed that the Official List of Electors has been duly certified by Mr. Gocool Boodhoo, Chief Elections Officer and is now ready for publication. Accompanying this letter is a CD containing the OLE in PDF format,” stated the letter – signed by GECOM Chairman Dr. Steve Surujbally.

President Jagdeo told reporters that, “now that I have received the notification from the Chairman of the Elections Commission, I plan to – and I know most of you showed up here for this announcement - I plan to, within the week [announce a date for elections]. 

“As most of you will be aware, I have been on record that this would be held in the constitutionally prescribed period for elections in Guyana and so everything will be done in accordance with our Constitution,” the President said.

GECOM had announced that November 14 was its earliest ready date. The President is not expected to set a polling date prior to this. 

Further, Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr. Luncheon, at his last post-Cabinet press briefing, had corrected his earlier stated date by which the new Parliament must be in place. This date is January 28, 2012, four months after the dissolution of the last Parliament. Dr. Luncheo had previously announced December 28, 2011 as that date.

According to the HPS, contracts for the procurement of polling day equipment, tools and materials were also presented and approved by Cabinet. GECOM has assured that, thus far, no ‘hiccups’ have been recorded as preparations are proceeding as planned, according to Dr. Luncheon.

President says Sharma suggested two-month ban, his wife suggested four

President Bharrat Jagdeo, on Tuesday October 4, cleared the air on the banning for four months of CNS Television Channel 6, saying it had nothing to do with Sharma - the individual, and that his wife and programme manager, Savitree Singh, had asked that the penalty be reduced to ‘four months’ at the meeting he had with the couple on Friday.

The President also made it very clear that it was not a political decision, as some critics and opposition elements are suggesting, but a decision that arose from recommendations made by the Advisory Committee on Broadcasting (ACB).

Speaking at a press conference, Mr. Jagdeo told reporters the ACB had recommended that CNS TV6 be suspended “for at least six months” and he was in receipt of that recommendation since June despite Sharma’s move to the court to block him from receiving it.

The suspension stemmed from the broadcasting of a commentary by Tony Vieira in which he made disparaging remarks about the religious community and Bishop Juan Edghill, who has since sued him and the television station. The ACB became involved as it constituted a broadcasting breach.

RECOMMENDATION : President Jagdeo, in giving a brief synopsis of the events leading to the suspension, noted that a complaint was filed by Edghill to the ACB, which at that time was made up of the Chairman Evan Persaud (representing Government), the nominee of the Leader of the Opposition Ron Case, and the private sector nominee Norman McLean.

QUOTE: “The boundaries that we shall not cross in these elections are race and religion. People’s race and religion are sacred. Every decentminded Guyanese, regardless of whether you like the Government or not, you should be intolerant to any attempt to use race and religion and I hope that we could count on all Guyanese for this...These things harmed our country in almost irreparable ways in the past. We have to ensure that this does not happen in the future.” - President Jagdeo

The President said these are the three persons who looked at this issue, and later provided him with their consideration and conclusion of the complaints about CNS Channel 6’s airing of Mr. Vieira’s commentary.

Mr. Jagdeo said the ACB’s finding constitutes offences against the Constitution, the Laws of Guyana and Sharma’s television licence.

“The (ACB) considered the matter and they recommended that Sharma be suspended for at least six months. They took into consideration that there were three other transgressions of a similar nature,” the President told reporters, adding that there was a progression in the transgressions and hence he was sanctioned for one day, then for one week and then for four months.

QUOTE: “I did not initiate this matter. It was initiated separately. I made it clear to Sharma that this went beyond Edghill. It was the content of the broadcast that was reprehensible. The content was intended to incite religious intolerance and disparage religions values in this country, which is reprehensible to our Constitution, the Laws of Guyana and, more particularly, to the licence.” President Jagdeo

“When the ACB sent their recommendation to me, Sharma went to the Court in June to prevent the ACB from having the recommendation come to me. Eventually, that injunction was lifted and I got the copy of the recommendation. A few weeks later, I invited Sharma in. At that meeting I made it public what he said, that he admitted that he [committed] an infringement of the licence, that he was sorry and that he had made a mistake and that they mixed up the tape and showed this,” the President said.

REGULATORY BAN “So I said to him that I will take into consideration all the issues you raised and meet you back. I travelled a bit and then I called Sharma. I said I would write him but I did not. He came to see me with Savitree [Singh] and I said to him that, based on the recommendations of the ACB, I was inclined to suspend him for eight months. “They (Sharma and his wife) started going on about the business and that they had loans to pay and a whole range of things. So I said to Sharma, in the presence of Dr. Roger Luncheon, do you think that I should do nothing about this, because this is a regulatory issue. This has nothing to do with Sharma - the individual,” the President said.

ZERO TOLERANCE “I made it clear, I am not tolerating any attempt to divide our people [using] race or religion, election season or no election season,” Mr. Jagdeo declared. 

“That was the crux of the matter. That’s why they recommended [a minimum of] six months. I explained this to Sharma over and over and over...that it had nothing to do with Edghill and apologising to Edghill. So I said to him, ‘do you think you should avoid sanction?’ ‘What do you think is reasonable?’

“His advocacy was service beyond Guyana”

Former Commonwealth Secretary General, Sir Shridath Ramphal, has lauded President Bharrat Jagdeo’s tenureship, as he paid tribute to His Excellency, during the President’s Appreciation celebration day, on Friday September 16, at the National Stadium, Providence.

Sir Shridath joined many who took the opportunity to express appreciation and gratitude for President Jagdeo’s astute leadership over the past 12 years, noting the tremendous development the country has witnessed during this period.

The Guyana-born Sir Shridath especially paid tribute to the president’s respect for the constitutional norms in relinquishing office as the Constitution of the republic required.

“To respect the Constitution is of course the norm; to do so with dignity and without hesitancy is deserving of tribute, and I pay that tribute with great admiration,” he said.

He noted too that President Jagdeo has demonstrated both the understanding and the aptitude, at many levels, of global encounters, such as international summits and meetings of Commonwealth Heads of Government.

This ability, he noted, is important in these days of globalization, where national and international matters are closely intertwined and all aspects of the president’s international work have had national implications, with much of it being driven in pursuit of the interests of Guyana and its people.

According to Sir Shridath, President Jagdeo has shown those qualities too in more specialised forums, like meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (where he was once Chairman of the Board of Governors) and high level environmental, climate change and forestry bodies.

He said, “Not surprisingly, his attendance was marked out and specifically sought. A voice from the developing world, from a small country, an authentic voice speaking with intelligence of the issues and with passion on them. The international community acknowledged President Jagdeo’s special qualities, and singled out his contributions.”

Sir Shridath explained that the linkage between local and global policies has not been better exemplified than in President Jadgeo’s “enlightened” Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) and the Guyana - Norway Partnership Agreement, which is recognized as the world’s second largest forest service climate.

“This agreement melds the vision and integrity of Guyana’s LCDS and Norway’s enlightened environmental policies,” he acknowledged.

As to the importance of the Head of State’s drive to promote the LCDS, Ramphal said, “Many years ago, I was a member of the International Commission on Environment and Development chaired by a former prime minister of Norway, Gro Harlem Bruntdland. The report we produced, ‘Our Common Future’, first developed the concept of sustainable development. Therefore, it is special to me that over two decades later, President Jagdeo should be so splendidly fulfilling for Guyana the promise of sustainable development – and with Norway’s help.”

In recent years President Jagdeo has spoken out internationally of the need for solutions to avert the worst extremes of climate change globally, and with special emphasis on its catastrophic consequences for developing countries.

In 2009, he did so with notable effect at the prestigious World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland.

“His advocacy was service beyond Guyana: it was service to a much wider world,” the former Commonwealth Secretary General explained.

And all that is besides his acknowledged regional leadership - leadership in CARICOM - nowhere better exemplified than in his opposition to the Economic partnership Agreement ( EPA ) with the European Union.

President Jagdeo was convinced that what was being concluded was bad for the region: a conviction in which he was to be proven right even before the ink of signature was dry. He gave leadership too in the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) of which he was an early chairman – constituting Guyana as a bridge between the Caribbean and South America, and thereby enhancing our country’s importance to both.

The president’s internationalism has earned more than acknowledgement of the contributions he can make at the global level; it has won him honour for his special capacities, competencies and achievements.

In 2008, both Time magazine and CNN named Bharrat Jagdeo as one of their ‘Heroes of the Environment’.

In 2010, at the level of the United Nations, he was named a Champion of the Earth, an award which, in the words of the United Nations Envivonment Programme, “recognises individuals who embody commitment and vision towards environmental leadership through their action and their influence”. This award spoke eloquently to the president’s internationalism, and brought glory to him and to all Guyana.

Within recent months he has been  invited to serve on the Board of the internationally respected Global Green Growth Institute.

In closing, Sir Ramphal stated, “As he leaves the presidency of Guyana, Bharrat Jagdeo can be proud that he has made a difference to the standing of developing countries in the global  community, and the quality of his advocacy has redounded to the credit of our country and our people. May he long continue to contribute to the welfare of his fellow citizens of the Earth,” Sir Shridat concluded.