Business View Caribbean - January 2016 77
Ministers to help run the country.
The new Minister of the Guyana Ministry of Finance
is the Honorable Winston Jordan. Minister Jordan
believes that victory at the polls last year freed his
country from the stigma of being not only one of the
poorest nations in the western hemisphere, but one
of the most corrupt ones, as well. “Part of the mantra
on which we ran the election was to ‘throw the corrupt
ones out.’ Because, over 20 years, they violated virtu-
ally every system that we had in place for transparency
and accountability. We had slid to become the second
most corrupt country within the CARICOM region,” Jor-
dan laments.
“There was visible evidence of that corruption,” he
continues. “What the government essentially did was
rule in their favor and in favor of their friends and a
close circle of relatives. All the wealth was being con-
centrated in a few hands, while the mass of the people
remained in poverty. We have former politicians here
that have houses that will make those in Miami seem
like huts. They’re huge mansions with swimming pools
- and they were being built on salaries of less than
$3,000US a month,” he adds.
According to the first-termminister, every new adminis-
tration has a honeymoon period - a “hundred days” - in
which it needs to quickly advance a short-term agen-
da, in order to stay true to its election promises and es-
tablish a long-lasting trust with the people. Jordan lists
some of the promises made by the winning coalition:
“We have promised some salary increases because
some of the salaries in public service are abysmal; we
promised support to the elderly in terms of pensions;
we promised support to the private sector in terms of
some incentives for expanding business; we promised
support to some of the traditional sectors that are in
