Opposition criticises President for publicly berating ministers, PSs, contractors; Ali calls approach ‘openness’

Last Updated on Thursday, 14 November 2024, 20:45 by Writer

The opposition has delivered a stinging backlash to President Irfaan Ali for publicly scolding a number of his ministers, permanent secretaries as well as contractors over the failure to complete works on time, but the Guyanese leader on Wednesday fended off criticisms and said it was his way of providing transparency.

“If you look at my style, you have to decide what you want. You want openness or you want a closed society. I go out to visit projects and I call it as it is; I call it as I see,” he told an Office of the President-organised interview with a number of media workers.

The President said he had no personal problems with anyone but was keen on knowing what was happening with the projects by asking questions. “There is no animosity. I’m not in a child’s play here. We’re dealing with a country and we have to be able to be strong enough to openly discuss issues,” he added.

In an early Tuesday morning meeting at State House, Dr Ali called out a number of government officials and contractors for four-month old delays in several construction projects. He scolded them publicly, as the meeting was streamed live on Facebook, for poor oversight and supervision of the contracts for which they were responsible. He also threatened contractors with cancelling their contracts and invoking liquidated damages if they did not complete the projects on time and no valid reason was given.

But Leader of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR), Aubrey Norton accused the President of behaving like a “juvenile” and that the administration was now panicking because incompetence has led to delayed and poorly executed multi-million dollar projects.

“Guyanese were able to witness the President and the PPP government in their true colours: incompetent, disorganised and disordered, and arrogantly disrespectful. The public saw firsthand the level of chaos that has become endemic within the entire PPP administration. The entire public procurement system is in a planning and execution crisis. Hundreds of billions of dollars of the people’s money are at stake,” Mr Norton said.

The PNCR Leader said that instead of seeking to analyse the root causes of the problem and proposing solutions, President Ali chose to launch a disgraceful barrage of insults, put-downs, and threats on the public servants, who are least to be blamed for the government’s outright inability to plan and manage. Mr Norton said Dr Ali’s juvenile behavior was misdirected and “only served to undermine the morale of our dedicated professionals.”

Leader of the Alliance For Change (AFC), Nigel Hughes questioned why Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo was not at the meeting to be asked for an update on the delayed US$759 million gas-to-energy project. He also indicated that Dr Ali “named and shamed” his cabinet without accepting full responsibility for the “obvious failure of his government.” “In your 51st month of a 60 month term in office you discover that your Ministers, Permanent Secretaries and your selected contractors have performed so badly that you are forced to publicly humiliate them by naming and shaming them at dawn on public television, the obvious question is where and with whom does the buck stop,” he said on Facebook.

The President said 95 percent of government projects were being executed effectively, but the remaining five percent “means something to me”. Responding to public criticisms that he was protecting certain people, he said all contractors whose projects were delayed were invited to Tuesday’s meeting.