Budget Debates 2025: APNU/AFC MPs critiques “contradictory, delusional, dishonest” – Jagdeo

Vice President Dr Bharrat Jagdeo has fiercely criticised the main opposition A Partnership for National Unity – Alliance For Change (APNU-AFC) following their contributions during the parliamentary debates on the 2025 national budget, dismissing their performance as “dysfunctional, delusional, and dishonest.”
Speaking during his weekly press conference on Thursday, Jagdeo criticised the Opposition’s arguments, stating that their presentations lacked coherence and credibility.
He noted that APNU/AFC MPs made “wild promises” without any framework or costing, raising questions about their ability to govern effectively.
“They’re delusional, apart from dysfunctional, delusional.”
“So, they’re delusional about the success that they had. You can hear them say with a straight face, people are better off in 2020 when they left office than they are today in Guyana. That is a healthy dose of cognitive disease,” the vice president said.
Among those who faced intense scrutiny and backlash were Opposition Members of Parliament Juretha Fernandes, Annette Ferguson, David Patterson, Ganesh Mahipaul and Catherine Hughes.
Jagdeo argued that the opposition’s ‘contradictory’ stance on infrastructure and economic policies demonstrated a fundamental lack of direction. He pointed out that while the opposition claimed to support development, they simultaneously criticized major projects initiated by the government.
According to Jagdeo, the opposition was attempting to rewrite history by suggesting that Guyana was in a better economic position in 2020 under their administration. He dismissed such claims stating that the facts showed otherwise.
“You’ve got to be delusional to argue in 2025, in the face of all of this evidence, that the People’s Progressive Party sought to rig the 2020 elections and they persist. That we are installed, undemocratic, etc. And they were the rightful government. You’ve got to be delusional and as I said before, that people are better off. So, when a Juretha Fernandes can say people had more jobs in 2020 than they have now, you have to examine her for that expression,” the Vice President asserted.
He also ridiculed opposition MPs for exaggerating minor achievements, such as small infrastructure projects, while failing to address systemic issues in key sectors such as water, housing, health, and education during their tenure in office.
Dishonesty, discrimination
Jagdeo did not hold back in accusing the opposition of outright dishonesty, particularly regarding their handling of Amerindian Community Support Officers (CSOs). He criticized APNU/AFC for dismissing nearly 2,000 Amerindians from the program in 2015 and then attempting to shift blame onto the PPP government.
“So today they’re claiming that the nearly 2,000 Amerindian CSOs who were sent home, which was done in August by them in 2015, that the PPP sent them home because we didn’t make some provision for them. Normally, the thing is that there is a provision in the budget where you can continue to fund wages and salaries and employment costs even if you don’t have a budget. You can’t fund capital costs, new capital projects, just rollover projects. They terminated the CSOs, sent them home… what was one of the largest acts of discrimination against indigenous people in this hemisphere,” he said, adding that APNU/AFC had justified the move by falsely claiming that the workers were politically aligned with the PPP.
Further, Jagdeo accused the opposition of stoking racial and elitist undertones in their rhetoric. He stated that certain members of APNU+AFC continued to push baseless corruption accusations against the current administration in an effort to distract from their own record of mismanagement and favoritism while in office.
“There’s always an underlying tone of discrimination in some of their presentations,” Jagdeo remarked. “They are racist and elitist… and they try to distract the public with these old, worn-out accusations of corruption.”
Jagdeo concluded his remarks by labeling the opposition’s budget debate performance as mediocre, arguing that they were not prepared to govern.
“They are not ready for the big league of running a country. It’s not because they are bad people; they are just clueless,” he said. (G1)