Irfaan Ali has thrown his administration’s own COVID-19 regulations aside

Dear Editor,

Irfaan Ali, head of the PPP administration, has thrown their COVID-19 regulations over his shoulders and has become Donald Trump’s heir-apparent in disdain for these necessary societal restrictions. The most recent example is a meeting with the Canadian High Commissioner to Guyana Lilian Chatterjee in which he is handing over a token of appreciation; there is no social distancing and the President refuses to wear a mask as in instructed in the administration’s recently gazetted “COVID-19 Emergency Measures (No.12). These strictures are obvious encumbrances to a regime eager to show it is fully in charge and it is business as usual. The ubiquitous and pervasive pandemic’s local spread challenges that these notions daily by the increase in infections and sadly, regretfully, deaths.

As against robust, dynamic governance in a new age, we have episodes like the recent Christmas tree light up at Tuschen, Region 3. Photos of this event were happily published by controversial Minister of Education Priya Manickchand on Facebook. In any health conscious society, this would be characterized as a super-spreader event, but in Guyana, the PPP encourages hundreds of Guyanese to gather in defiance to laws put in place to guarantee their own health and safety and that of the rest of the public.

If there is any question where the PPP is on the management of COVID, the increased need to seek COVID relief funds as a country should provide adequate answers. In a recent edition of Kaieteur News it was stated, “The Irfaan Ali administration is heading towards getting its third loan to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, on a road to racking up so much debt for Guyana that by the time it gets out of the pandemic, Guyana will owe banks a further US$60 million. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is currently considering granting Guyana a loan of US$30.4 million to fight COVID-19, on top of the US$22M it gave Guyana last month.”

The challenges are great – a wild, unabated spread locally, which threatens to be exacerbated by issues percolating on our borders. And if citizens were drunk with any confidence in the healthcare system under the PPP, the report of the six-day-old infant dying from COVID and the baby’s parents testing negative should be sobering. Stabroek News headline read, “CMO says infant who died with COVID could have been infected at hospital.” The paper stated, “According to the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Dr. Narine Singh, a nosocomial infection, also called a Hospital Acquired Infection (HAI), is an infection that occurs in a hospital or other health care facility. Transmission usually occurs via healthcare workers, patients, hospital equipment, or interventional procedures.”

By the administration’s consistent and persistent flouting of COVID regulations, it should be instead championing by example, we are reminded that we are in this crisis by ourselves. We are reminded daily, as well, by these events unfolding locally of the American Chief Justice John Roberts on the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare): “Members of this Court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.”

Yours truly,
Sherod Avery Duncan