Hoyte warns investors over GEC deal details - govt urges rejection of 'obstructionist behaviour' By Patrick Denny Stabroek News July 28, 1999 The opposition PNC says the refusal of the government to share the details of the proposed agreement between itself and the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC)/ESBI smacks of arrogance and contempt. At a press conference yesterday, People's National Congress (PNC) leader, Desmond Hoyte, called the refusal to release details of the GEC privatisation deal "a combination of arrogance toward the people of this country and an ill-founded belief on the part of the regime that it could proceed to administer the affairs of this country without the involvement and support of major sections of society who are not its political supporters. "The PNC will oppose the legislation. It will oppose the privatisation deal. CDC/ESBI should assess the situation, take heed and quietly fade away unless they want to buy a bundle of political and industrial problems and lose their investment in the process." Hoyte added that "they could serve their best interests by advising the regime that its approach to the privatisation of the GEC is unacceptable in today's world." Hoyte said that while the government may have the votes to pass the necessary legislation related to the privatisation of the GEC, "politics is not only about legislation. Politics is about the masses and it is about action, parliamentary and extra-parliamentary. "They are so many things that we can do, and we intend to do, to make sure that CDC/ESBI [has] reservations about their involvement in this country." Hoyte observed that "every investor takes into account political risk in a country and one would have thought that CDC/ESBI would have been looking very carefully at the political climate to ask themselves whether this is a climate in which they could feel comfortable." Hoyte stressed that as reasonable people they could not feel comfortable with so many major sectors of the society hostile to the agreement--the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC), the Guyana Consumers' Association, the opposition political parties, individual activists. "They must know that they are flying in the face of hostile public opinion." The Government of Guyana, in a release issued after Hoyte's press conference, said that it was not surprised by his latest threat to the impending privatisation of GEC, describing his warning as smacking "of his anti-national obsession to oppose the privatisation at all cost." "The PNC leader is holding himself out as a political scarecrow to frighten investors, and to frustrate further efforts to bring a critically needed strategic partnership in the electricity sector." The release added that "it is a sad commentary that the person who now speaks glibly about 'arrogance' and 'contempt' for the people had conspired to sell the GEC at a basement price of US$4 million in a secret deal." Hoyte said that what would satisfy the opposition political parties was for the process to be halted and the parties to be given the opportunity to be acquainted with the agreement so that their concerns could be addressed. Also, he said, it would allow them to know the context in which the bills are being passed. The bills referred to are the Electricity Sector Reform Bill 1999 and the Public Utilities Bill 1999 which come up for their second readings tomorrow. Deferral of debate on the bills was requested last Thursday by the parliamentary opposition and agreed to by the government to allow for discussions with Prime Minister Sam Hinds who has ministerial responsibility for the electricity sector. But on Saturday, the opposition parties aborted the meeting with Prime Minister Hinds when he reneged on a promise that he would have made the agreement available to them, on the grounds that he had been advised that he "had exceeded [his] bounds." The Prime Minister, on the previous day, had reportedly agreed to make the agreement available to representatives of the parliamentary opposition parties. In a letter to Hoyte dated July 23, Hinds said that "on the question of making the agreements known to identified persons in the political parties we may be able to do this on their entering into the same confidentiality agreement which we have entered into." Responding to the observation that his administration had behaved in a similar manner in 1991 and 1992, Hoyte stated: "We are operating in a different dispensation now when people will not accept a clandestine approach. Today, we have to do things differently." Hoyte also argued, when pressed as to the reason for the PNC's opposition, that because it was unaware of the provisions of the agreement it could not exercise rational judgement on the legislation in which a number of clauses refer to it. He said, too, that the PNC wanted to know the final form of the agreement reached as the GTUC had withdrawn its support for the agreement when it was restructured in a manner different to that originally proposed. PNC front-bencher, Winston Murray, who was also at the press conference, and had represented the PNC at the meeting with the Prime Minister, explained that the opposition parliamentary representatives had asked to see the draft of the proposed licence to be issued to CDC/ESBI but were rebuffed. He said that the reason for asking to see the draft licence was that in matters of definitional interpretation between the licence and existing laws the licence took precedence. Also, he said that the agreement placed the CDC/ESBI outside the ambit of the Companies Act 1991, and while there might be a good reason for this, the party could not know unless it saw the agreement. Murray said too that the terms of the agreement allows the minister responsible for public utilities to issue instructions to the Deeds Registry to process any matter related to the new utility. Also, he said, the agreement provides for the ministry to acquire land under the Compulsory Acquisition of Lands Act, which it would then pass to the utility to use for commercial purposes. Murray suggested that while the Act should be used, the utility should acquire the land at commercial prices in direct negotiations with the owner of the land. A © page from: Guyana: Land of Six Peoples