As 2016 grinds to an end, Guyana is poised to regress backwards. 2015 provided a signal, but 2016 has confirmed that we made a horrific mistake replacing the PPP with the APNU/AFC. The trajectory of economic and social development which Guyana experienced between 1992 and 2015 has dramatically stagnated. Budget 2017 eloquently admitted that Guyana faces a dismal future. Bharat Jagdeo warned that Guyana is plunging into economic stagnation and Christopher Ram cautioned that Budget 2017 portents a disaster. Unfortunately, the private sector, trade unions and other civil society groups agree.
Frighteningly, APNU/AFC seems eerily infatuated with the authoritarian practices of the Burnham-led People’s National Congress (PNC) government between 1968 and 1992. APNU/AFC is not just clueless in moving Guyana on a trajectory of continued economic and social development, but is determined to reintroduce dictatorship in Guyana. They have ruled with an iron fist and total disrespect for our constitution. For instance, they have wilfully arrogated responsibilities that the constitution has assigned to other people.
When the APNU/AFC instructed the GPHC Board to fire their CEO, or when they summarily terminated the appointment of Carvil Duncan as a member of various constitutional commissions, they abrogated the constitution. When APNU/AFC threatens to garnish people’s bank account and continues Cabinet’s decision-making for procurement, it abrogates the law. These are, however, the tip of the iceberg, as there are too many instances of abrogation of the constitution and people’s freedom.
The PPP recorded economic growth of 3.5 per cent to 6.5 per cent in 19 of its 22 budgets, and since 2006 recorded nine straight years of economic growth. There were only three budgets in 23 years in which economic growth was not achieved and in each of those instances natural disasters were the driving force. There were, for example, the El Nino droughts of 1996/1997 and the famous La Nina flood of 2005. Between 1992 and 2015, Guyana’s GDP increased from about $US300 per capita in 1992, one of the worst in the world, to about $US3800 by the end of 2014, more than 12 times what it was in 1992. Guyana progressed from a low-income to a middle-income country.
The upwards trajectory under the PPP has come to a sudden and grinding halt. Now even the APNU/AFC have conceded that economic growth has slowed considerably, dropping to 2.6 per cent, significantly below the 4.4 per cent APNU/AFC had projected. The prospects for economic growth in 2017, particularly with the foolish decision to close several sugar estates and the downgrading of rice, appear dismal. Their threat to garnish peoples’ bank accounts is not only undemocratic, it is foolishly anti-business. Far from forcing compliance, people will find ways to migrate money out of the local banking system. In 2016 alone APNU/AFC announced 200 new tax measures. People now are taxed for going to the toilets as water and toilet paper are taxed. Even Internet use is taxed.
The social development programmes have already begun to show strains. For instance, under the PPP the immunisation programme expanded and increased. From about six vaccines in the routine immunisation programme, the PPP expanded the program by providing 15 different vaccines for children. In addition, the vaccination programme expanded, moving from 40 per cent to 60 per cent coverage in 1992, to 100 per cent coverage by 2008. With less than 70 per cent vaccination coverage at the end of October, we will struggle to even reach 90 per cent by the end of 2016. This dismal failure is an indictment of the APNU/AFC for abandoning our children who are now majorly at risk for diseases such as mumps and polio, which Guyana brilliantly eliminated for more than a decade now.
The PPP was far from perfect, but it moved Guyana in an upward trajectory of economic and social progress. The naysayers might sing songs of denial, but cannot dispute progress in education, health, housing, sanitation and standard of living. Facts speak for themselves. People live longer, poverty has been dented, hunger has been virtually eliminated, more people own homes, cars, telephones and computers, there are more high school, college and tertiary education graduates and our infrastructure has improved leaps and bounds. These achievements under the PPP are now at risk. We suspected this in 2015, but 2016 now confirms Guyana is poised to regress. Unfortunately, 2017 might well speed our regression into backwardness.
