APNU barely visible in symbolic representation

Dear Editor,
I read with amusement Sherwood Lowe’s claim that voters trashed APNU at the LGE because of something he calls “dependency.” The only dependency that surfaced in the 2023 LGE was, in fact, APNU’s predictable dependency on race-baiting, combined with a dependency on twisting history.
During the LGE campaign, APNU was barely visible in person or in symbolic representation. Most people did not even know if Mr Norton was in the country. There was a clip of the Hon Annette Ferguson trying to ‘fight-off’ some determined PPP/C supporters. Ms Ferguson was apparently claiming party ownership of the neighbourhood. It was quite embarrassing. That, Mr Lowe, is what dependency looks like, live, and direct, as we say.
Sherwood Lowe has the habit of trying to sound intellectual, but often, comical statements about the economy, vacuous statements about oil and gas, and junior flyweight deposits on politics. His idea that the PPP/C flattened the APNU at LGE 2023 because of the economic dependency of voters is so ludicrous that it surpasses his own party’s claim about vote selling. Sherwood Lowe hates the APNU voters who abandoned APNU and went to the PPP/C precisely because they rejected infantile narratives such the economic dependency of voters.
Lowe is either too young to know, or too intentionally stubborn to learn what economic dependency in Guyana meant during the days when his comrades ruled Guyana, and when Guyana was an economic basket case. Let me repeat something that everyone in Guyana and the Caribbean know quite well. Guyana is the only country in the world that had a lower per capita GDP at the end of the 1980s, compared to the beginning of the decade. This, Mr Lowe is why people had to depend on comrades in the PNC to get jobs, medicine, groceries, gasoline and kero, school books. There were no contracts to give out because the country was bankrupt.
Those that read my letters know that I am dogged about evidence, and accordingly I must provide few quotes from Lowe to illustrate the sheer comicality of his twisted view. Here he is in his own words – “I applaud those voters who stood up to the PPP’s coercion and those who voted as a form of protest.” Who voted in protest? Where? Sir, the APNU got a trashing, and there was no protest vote.
Lowe gets even bolder with the nonsense towards the back end of his missive. Let me quote him again, and readers, do brace yourselves for this Baby Doc bit of nonsense. Referring to those who left the APNU and came to the PPP/C, this is what Lowe had to say – “Let us still embrace them as members of the family. Let us not allow the PPP to divide us as we seek to build a country where people can enjoy a good life…” Sorry man, they do not want to embrace you. They have already left bro – as in goodbye, we-gone, hasta luego, adieu, kwaherini, sayonara, arrivederci, or in US English, Beat It!
Lowe’s fake magnanimity is staggering. How could he at this late stage, after all the attempted rigging in 2020, the land giveaways after the No-Confidence Motion, the conjuring of the “Black-Pudding” ideology, and Ogunseye’s racial cacophony, how could he at this rather late stage, try to be “the family” of those that had asked you to stop those practices, as well as the vulgarly undemocratic traditions of the PNC and APNU. Lowe should learn something from LGE 2023 – do not think the APNU race-baiting politics will work forever. Voters do not want to deal with that crap anymore. To get voters these days, you must have solid economic policies, strong democratic politics, and the deep institutionalisation of good governance.

Sincerely,
Dr Randolph Persaud