APNU/AFC unable to campaign on achievement

Dear Editor,
It is a massive disappointment to listen to the incumbent APNU/AFC unable to campaign based on its achievement despite being in Government since May 2015. It should have been an easy walkover for them but the fact is, they have little to show for their tenure in Government, except an accelerating decline in our social and economic life due mainly to poor monetary and fiscal policies, wasteful spending, astronomical and unprecedented levels of corruption and blatant violations of our Constitution.
Our declining standard of living resulted from over 30,000 job losses, wage freeze in the sugar industry and massive taxation which emptied the pockets of the people by nearly $100 billion in 2019 alone. The APNU/AFC coalition not only pauperised the masses but they enriched their friends and families through corrupt contracts and giveaways. Theirs was the ‘good life’. The poor people measure their standard of living by simply assessing the level of their disposable income. Do they have more money in their pockets now than in 2015? The answer is they have a lot less! Only this morning a student told me that, “money na roll sir”. I asked her what she meant and she told me that money is hard to come by – her mother told her that. Yet Granger has the audacity to come to Berbice and continue his empty rhetoric. Since 2015 he has been singing how Region Six is important and he will make it the ‘sugar bowl’ and the ‘rice pot’ but has delivered nothing. According to him, the problem is that the PPP controls the Region Six RDC, the NDCs and the municipalities and that’s why the region is underdeveloped. He failed to let the people know that every year he cuts the RDC capital budget by nearly 50 per cent and it is his REO who holds the purse to the region’s money! There can be no empowerment without resources Mr Granger!
Granger always has a ‘plan’ for everything but nothing ever materialises. Now he has a ‘plan’ for New Amsterdam to make it ‘the engine of growth’. According to him, his Government will not shut down the sugar industry but wants to make it work. Just like he did during the 2015 elections campaign trail and then he unconscionably closed down four of those estates thereby prompting the once champion of the sugar workers, Nagamootoo, to announce a few days ago at Whim that those estates were ‘absolutely useless’. Already, the three remaining estates are so starved for resources that the crop and annual targets are no longer achievable, this is due to low yields and continuous breakdown of the factories due to lack of monies. The SPU spent $17.4 billion in 2019 with nothing tangible to show. Granger should explain this phenomenon to his audience. A few years back, he told the rice farmers that it is not the Government’s responsibility to help them. Fortunately for him, he was not speaking to sugar workers and rice farmers but his bussed-in loyalists from various parts of Guyana who screamed their approval of his misguided utterances.
Granger should admit that it is his Government which has transformed the four closed estates into ‘museums’ since after closure his Government cannibalised the factories and transformed the cultivation into a part of the Amazon rainforest. Jordan has said that the closed estates will still be operational so that they can have high sale values but that was not to be. The APNU/AFC Government made sure that no one will ever buy the closed estates. They have ‘right-sized’ the sugar industry and yet there is no solution in sight, the remaining estates are on the verge of collapsing. If Granger goes back in Government we can be assured of more ‘museums and historical and heritage sites’. He may even create a brand new Ministry to run these! Nagamootoo immediately comes to mind!
Furthermore, Granger has the false notion that only if the APNU/AFC controls Region Six can it be able ‘to deliver a good quality of life to the residents…’ This man needs to understand that his Government has been in control of the entire country since 2015 and they have been unable to ‘deliver a good quality of life’ for the masses excepting his ‘fat cats’. He probably feels that Jagdeo and the PPP have been running the country since he seemed obsessed with attacking them with baseless innuendos and falsehoods.
In conclusion, the voters of Region Six will definitely do the ‘chasing out’ on March 2 but it will not be the PPP/C. On that day, Guyanese will vote for a President who is not ‘missing in action’ but one who will join hands with them in forging the real good life for themselves and their children!

Yours sincerely,
Haseef Yusuf