Tuesday, October 13, 2009

PNC shits itself! This time over the LCDS.

President Bharrat Jagdeo has expressed “disappointment” over the opposition People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) statement that Guyana’s ambitious Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS) consultation “is a sham.”

President Bharrat Jagdeo at the media conference yesterday.

The Head of State said so at a press conference hosted at Guyana International Conference Centre, Liliendaal, East Coast Demerara.

He was referring to a Kaieteur News headline ‘LCDS consultations a sham by administration’, over a story which said the PNCR views with skepticism the intentions of the Bharrat Jagdeo regime to engage in consultations on avoided deforestation and their now well touted LCDS.

“I saw in the papers, this morning, that the Opposition has said that the LCDS consultation is a sham and what I find very unappealing about it is that they could disparage the efforts of so many people,” Mr. Jagdeo remarked.

He continued: “Everyone with a modicum of sense or who would have observed what has taken place over the last three months would see that no country, that I know of in this world, has consulted as much on any issue as we did in Guyana.”

President Jagdeo declared that, definitely, no country, including both developed and developing countries, has subjected their environmental plans to the type of scrutiny that Guyana has allowed in this case.

“If you examine the website that is managed by the secretariat, you will see that we have faithfully represented every comment that we have received, positive and negative,” he told reporters.

President Jagdeo said it has even uploaded articles from the newspapers that have been critical of the strategy, “just to give a balanced view of the consultations.”

“So, when the Opposition says this, people know they can’t be serious, first of all and, secondly, I think it is in the true fashion of what our Opposition has become, many ways irrelevant and on the fringe of things,” he offered.

“They can’t support anything that is mainstream, anything that is positive. They can only see negatives. They can never run a country with this outlook,” said President Jagdeo, criticising the Opposition party.

Declaring that the Opposition is “disrespectful of people”, he asked: “Can you imagine the 157 Toshaos, elected leaders of the Amerindian communities who sat here for several days, including two full days, with me starting from morning going late into the night, talking about the future of our country and the LCDS – that they are disparaging the efforts of all of these people?”

President Jagdeo reiterated, “It is just a lack of respect for all Guyanese but, more particularly, for Amerindians.

“If you can dismiss all of these efforts made by all the elected leaders of the Amerindian communities, who spent two full days discussing this, then, clearly, you are either out of touch with reality or you just don’t care about people’s opinions. But it’s the PNC and I guess I shouldn’t come to expect any better.

“It’s just that I am disappointed because I was hoping that we could have a positive engagement since the LCDS is good for the country and for our people and will be good for many decades to come for this country,” he maintained, adding: “So I am very, very disappointed about that.”

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) is moving to forge a successor to the current Kyoto Protocol that is to be endorsed in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December and President Jagdeo has been leading the Guyana lobby for forest preservation to be a central plank of that new pact.

Guyana’s strategy is based on avoiding deforestation and preserving its standing forests, in exchange for payment from the international community, for those services, in the cause of climate change.

1 comment:

  1. The PNC knows nothing when it comes to the development of Guyana.

    Tell me one incentive/project/development that the PPP government has done that the PNC supported.
    You tell me???

    ReplyDelete