Inevitably, as soon as the PPP wins an election, the PNC and its acolytes shift the narrative to one which claims “African-Guyanese” will be consigned to “another round of slavery”!! This time they came up with “installed emerging apartheid state regime”!! Gotta says it without pause as one word!!
Back in 1992, implicitly conceding they’d rigged the previous four, they objected to Cheddi Jagan leading the new Government!! If that happened, the sky would fall and the armed forces would rebel!! Cheddi was – God forbid!! – “Indian”!! An ironic label for a fella who, as a dyed-in-the-wool communist, had nothing but contempt for ethnic labels!
“How about Roger Luncheon?” the PPP countered. HE was “Black”, no? “Nah…too red,” was the riposte!!
After 1992, the PPP had been castigated for “ethnic cleansing” – never mind Desmond Hoyte had started the shrinking on IMF’s orders!! And even HE found it impossible to shrink a 90% African-Guyanese institution without firing African-Guyanese!!
Interestingly, when the APNU/AFC Government in 2015 also made cutbacks, no such comment was made. After all, the slashes were primarily from the 10% “other”!!
Another hyperbolic charge being screamed is the PPP’s giving away all the oil money to its supporters. The not-so-subtle subtext is that the ‘supporters’ are Indian Guyanese!! But yet, at the same time, the PNC and its acolytes are screaming bloody murder about the PPP buying out its African-Guyanese base with cash handouts, house lots, boulevards and roads, bridges, etc etc!! Jeez, have they forgotten that this tactic is as old as democracy itself??
Anyhow, here we are in 2023, when, even though the elections of 2011 and 2015 showed conclusively that the PPP can be beaten in free and fair elections, the narrative’s again being floated that if the PPP were to get back in 2025, it’s crying time again!! The big question is: “Why??” The PPP doesn’t have its old built-in majority of Indian-Guyanese, so doesn’t this mean it got enough African-Guyanese votes to put it over the top?? Just as the PNC-as-APNU was able to do with Indian-Guyanese in 2015?
If the PPP took its ‘whuppin’ like a man, and stayed around for another election – with a plan to woo voters outside its traditional base – why can’t the PNC now do the same?? Or, hold it!! Do they worry the PPP is not gonna fire 7000 African-Guyanese workers and hand them the elections??
So, the old chestnut of “power-sharing” is back in play!! But it’s an open field wherein any government HAS to get votes from every ethnic group to win. That’s NOT power-sharing??
…on the ABCE
Oh, how things change when the shoe’s on the other foot!! Back in 2014, after a “feral blast” from the PPP soured relations with the Americans, the PNC shed crocodile tears about the PPP insulting our “nearest and dearest ally”!! They’d embraced the “Vote Like a Boss” initiative that was sponsored from those quarters – which awoke their alienated youth base in 2015.
But now, for the last three years, the sounds coming out from the Opposition camps against the Yanks and the entire western block are sounding suspiciously “feral”!! The “installed regime” trope mentioned above has been picked up by a wide swathe of PNC myrmidons, and extended to the Brits for working to extend our “enslavement” into the future. Even our own Mia Mottley has been cussed out as a “slave catcher” for agreeing with the ABCE countries that the PNC was caught with its hands in the ballot boxes!! Why is this??
Because they dared to say, “Please, if you’re going to rig, at least give us deniability??!!
…on development
The Brits left us with a jaundiced view of manual labour, because during slavery and indentureship, we never saw them working with their hands. But since oil’s gonna run out, we gotta teach our youths that agri’s their future!!
Get those hands dirty!!
