Parking meters are latest episode in President’s disappointing leadership

Dear Editor, The parking meters ignominy is the latest episode in a running narrative of President David Granger’s dull and disappointing leadership of the coalition government, and it does not bode well for Guyana and most Guyanese that this performance is playing right into the come-back plan of the PPP led by the politically restive Bharrat Jagdeo. Back in June 2014 when the AFC’s Moses Nagamootoo was calling for a no-confidence vote against the Ramotar administration for illegally spending monies the APNU and AFC parliamentary opposition previously voted down in the 2014 Budget, then Opposition Leader Granger kept demanding President Ramotar should stage overdue local government elections. This misplaced priority by Mr Granger would continue to define his lacklustre leadership as President. I haven’t the foggiest notion why exactly the manipulators of the PNC preferred David Granger over Carl Greenidge for the leadership the role of the party, but while it might be easy to surmise it was because of Granger’s decades-long patriotic character as a leader in the army, any storyline of President Granger’s service to the army to justify his right to lead Guyana, should end with the qualifying observation that since he never led the army or any institution of national repute, the least he could have done was to surround himself with reputable leaders or experienced managerial types to provide him with solid and sound advice worthy of garnered public commendation instead of growing public consternation.

There remains a distinct difference between a virtuous servant and a visionary leader. A strong and effective visionary political leader will have 1) a pellucid, panoramic outlook for his institution, with goals and values that remain constant regardless of the changing current and conditions, and will detect and remove men or means that can invalidate the vision, 2) a new political culture defined and developed that supports the vision, and 3) a supporting cast of players who share, promote and defend the new culture to the extent that if the leader passes on the culture supporting the vision will endure. On all three counts, President Granger is 0.

Editor, ever since the coalition was formed around the so-called Cummingsburg Accord with Mr Granger being the group’s presidential candidate and Mr Nagamootoo being the prime ministerial candidate, with clearly defined responsibilities, we saw, among others issues, the bizarre re-naming of ministries by President Granger; the imposition of a pay raise for cabinet ministers to prevent them from being tempted to steal or engage in corruption; the diluting of the Cummingsburg Accord; Minister Harmon boarding a plane to China in search of the outstanding US$5M in GT&T shares, but coming back with a yet to be publicly declared disposition of the matter; the D’Urban Park renovation fiasco; Bondgate; and the latest two, the coalition government’s bungled handling of the process to produce a new Gecom Chairman, and the parking meters debacle.

No one knows what will become of efforts to name a new Gecom Chairman or if the existing one will remain indefinitely, but this was supposed to be a two-man exercise featuring the Opposition Leader and the President. Instead, the President dropped the ball and we have had nothing but a cacophony of political and legal opinions that were not even necessary. The President simply passed on to his Attorney-General a matter that was supposed to be primarily within the purview of the President, and now it has become a political football.

But no sooner had the discordant noise over the search for a Gecom Chaimran started subsiding when another cacophony of opinions arose on the parking meters. And instead of the coalition government taking over the matter because of its questionable genesis, the President merely vented it was an unnecessary burden and left it to percolate in a cauldron of growing anger and rebellion. Before we knew it, the PPP got involved via dormant supporters and it became a full-blown national political issue. Your news article yesterday, ‘Jagdeo repeats call for scrapping of paid parking project-expresses solidarity with protest movement,’ is fraught with irony, because the PPP, led by Mr Jagdeo, is not peachy clean when it comes to projects being imposed at enormous cost to the public. For example, Mr Jagdeo chose Fip Motiolall build the access road to Amaila at a cost of US15M without public tendering and knowing that Motilall never built a road. Motilall would eventually disappear after failed attempts to build the road, and that was only one of many such costly projects under the PPP regime. Anyway, like the Gecom chair fiasco, the parking meters debacle did not need to devolve into such a public spectacle. If only President Granger had taken a hands-on leadership approach from the time Deputy Mayor Sherod Duncan exposed the City Hall trio of Chase-Green, King and Clarke for trying to impose this highly suspicious project on citizens without due process and true meaningful consultation. I blogged, ad nauseam on Stabroek News, that citizens should simply boycott the parking meters until the investor is starved of revenue and quits. But when I read of protests and saw accompanying photos of who was showing up for and against the project, I knew the exercise had morphed into a political one. Now that the toxic spit has hit the public fan and the PPP is trying to score political points, the coalition is suddenly offering to have the parking fees lowered. This is the type of belated reaction from President Granger that has come to characterize his lacklustre presidency, and if he continues this pattern of faltering leadership into 2020, the coalition will have to cede power to a Jagdeo-led PPP and allow the race to the bottom to continue. President Granger still has enough time on his side to start leading and stop the downslide. Yours faithfully, Emile Mervin