A couple of days after lashing out at the Pegasus hotel for their “atrocious” rooms and for not reinvesting a greater share of their profits in the country, the President of Guyana, with his Minister of Tourism, Industry and Commerce in tow, opted to spend some time with New Year's revelers in the Savannah Suite of the same hotel.
The President's decision to visit the Pegasus would have no doubt helped to diffuse any tensions generated by his uncalled for remarks.
The attack on the Pegasus and another foreign owned hotel came during an end-of-year Press briefing in which the President was attempting to justify the advances made to Buddy's International Hotel, the completion of which is critical to the government meeting its obligation for providing accommodation to the teams and officials for Cricket World Cup 2007.
Some sections of the media in Guyana and some individuals had tried to link the government's assistance to Buddy's Hotel with extraneous considerations. The President should have by now grown accustomed to these tactics and the tendency of some people to anlayse every major policy decision through ethnic prisms.
When for example the President did an inspection tour of Buddy's hotel, there were murmurs about the propriety of the President touring a facility owned by someone who was once before the Courts on a charge. There were also subtle insinuations about race.
However, when the same President made his annual Christmas walkabout and visited a location in Georgetown owned by someone of a different ethnicity, but who was also once before the Courts on a similar charge to Buddy, we did not hear too many persons question the propriety of that visit.
While also there were insinuations about propriety of the advance to Buddy's, there were no similar insinuations when the President made an advance to help pay the city council workers.
As a seasoned politician, the President of Guyana ought to have expected the reaction to the government's decision to advance money to the Buddy's project. In Guyana, decisions are often viewed through certain prisms, one of which is ethnicity.
Whatever the criticisms are of the Jagdeo administration, the President cannot be accused of pursuing a deliberate agenda of discrimination or ethnic marginalisation. In terms of the distribution of the resources of the State, accusations of ethnic favouritism have no merit.
The government is also making advances to another hotel under construction at Providence, owned by persons of a different ethnicity to Buddy's. Therefore, there can be no suggestion of ethnic favouritism.
The President therefore did not need to attack the Pegasus and another international hotel in order to justify the advances being made to Buddy's International Hotel. The advances to the two hotels under construction were justified in order to protect the government's obligations to provide rooms for the teams and officials for CWC 2007, and by the fact that the advances were not granted willy-nilly, but were secured by liens on the properties being assisted. The advances, I believe, were approved by parliament in the form of a supplementary provision.
Instead of simply stating these reasons, the President at his end-of-year press briefing allowed himself to be carried away resulting in him being critical of the conditions of the Pegasus and its remittance of profits. Had such a statement originated from a non-entity within the government it would hardly have made headlines but when the Head of State is going to get into this sort of bashing of the private sector it has serious repercussions.
The statement about the rooms at the Pegasus Hotels would have been read internationally. The Pegasus is without doubt Guyana's top hotel and is expected to providing accommodation to visitors to Guyana. A great disservice to the nation's hosting of CWC 2007 has been committed by this criticism of the country's leading hotel.
The second implication of the President's outburst is more serious. It concerns the remarks about taking profits out of Guyana.
Here we are presented with a major contradiction. The government of Guyana has been wooing investments by pointing to how freely investors can repatriate their profits. Investors are told to come and invest in Guyana because there are no restrictions to taking out your profits.
What is wrong with the Pegasus taking out its profits? Foreign interests dominate our economy, with a great many of them taking much of their profits out of their country, a practice allowable under our laws. The President's remarks therefore are likely to turn off investors who will now question just how seriously to take the legal assurances concerning repatriation of profits.
While the President's visit to the Pegasus on New Year's morning is likely to signal that he harbours no ill feelings towards that establishment, it will take a lot more to undo the damage done to Guyana's investment climate.