Head of the Guyana Office for Investment, Dr Peter Ramsaroop, chided the We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) party for releasing a manifesto which he said displayed “significant plagiarism” from the documents of other political parties.
Dr Ramsaroop made these remarks during an episode of the ‘On the Record’ television show released on Friday.
“When he basically said a couple of days ago that he will come up shortly or very soon with a manifesto, we knew then that it didn’t exist…so what happened [at WIN’s manifesto launch on Thursday] is a combination of other people’s ideas,” he noted.
To substantiate this view, Dr Ramsaroop pointed to several initiatives outlined in the manifesto that appeared familiar to him from policies pursued by the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C).
“The digital economy initiative really expanded on what the PPP/C has already done in the ICT world in terms of digitisation…Mr Mohamed tried to then copy that,” he noted.
He pointed to the suggestion made by Mohamed to institute a business incubator in the form of a development bank. This idea, however, has already been piloted by President Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali and Vice President Dr Bharrat Jagdeo.
Not only is it the copying of the ideas alarming, the chief investment officer said, but the lack of certainty about whether WIN leader and sanctioned businessman Mohamed has the wherewithal to implement such a comprehensive project.
“To copy something of that magnitude without understanding what is required in terms of putting together such an initiative makes you really wonder…when you steal ideas, you have to have some competence behind it to be able to advance and describe what it does,” he explained.
