Last Sunday both the PPP and the PNC skipped Sunday School and held rallies in traditional strongholds. The PNC in Linden of bauxite fame and the PPP in Bath that sends sugar workers to Blairmont estate. Bauxite and sugar – the two old mainstays of the Guyanese economy that have both fallen on hard times. With both parties coming out of the same socialist PPP womb, their founders and leaders had always talked about arriving at the kingdom of the “working class”. Sugar and bauxite workers were the core of that nirvana that never came!!
Why?? Well, your Eyewitness just had to listen to Comrade (why not?) Aubrey Norton in Linden where the faithful came out in the rain to listen to their local boy who’s hoping to make good!! Growing up in the town named after Burnham – Linden – it wasn’t surprising Norton gave his heart to the PNC from boyhood. But in the fifty odd– VERY odd!! – years since, the party hasn’t been that good to Aubrey. Always not even the bridesmaid when it came to the inner circle – just the rabble rouser!!
So here he was – like Madonna “touched for the very first time” – to run for the Presidency, and all he could do was rabble rouse against the PPP – rather than outlining his plan for the region. You’d think since he presumably knew the town and it’s challenges from inside out, he’d be chock-full with ideas. But what was his big talking point?? The old saw about the PPP wanting to remove the subsidy from electricity -which allows Lindeners to pay less than half of what the rest of the country pays!!
How’d that happen you ask, dear reader?? Well back when bauxite was going good, Demba purified some of it to that intermediate product called “alumina” – on the way to producing aluminium. The alumina production needed tons of electricity – for which Demba brought in massive generators and passed on the excess to the town for free!! But when the PNC wrecked the bauxite industry, the alumina plant had to be shuttered – and the PNC government took over the expenses for running the generators.
In 2012, when the PPP had a minority in Parliament, the PNC and AFC agreed that much of the electricity was being wasted because it was free – and a charge should be imposed. A bill was duly passed to give effect to this joint decision. But the PPP was being set up!! PNC and AFC operatives rushed to Linden, told the folks the dastardly PPP was charging for electricity. The Wismar Bridge was blockaded and two Lindeners were killed!!
And it’s this incendiary slander of PPP raising electricity bills that Norton revived!! Adding fuel to fire!!
…to build Guyanese
Over in Bath, all the PPP Big Guns were out – Pressie, VP Jagdeo and PM Mark Phillips – to address the – by now expected – “tsunami of red”!! And what was their main talking point?? Pressie said it all – the PPP’s concrete achievements during the last five years!! He was emphasising the point made by your Eyewitness a short while back – the difference between “moutar” and “guitar”!!
It’s now a trite observation that for a country to lift itself out of poverty in a sustainable way – the people gotta be EDUCATED to take advantage of the opportunities presented. It’s the old saw that “give a man a fish – or a cash handout – and you’ve just given him a meal; but teach him how to fish and you’ve fed him for life”!! So, Pressie just had to mention the achievements of the PPP’s GOAL program – where over 20,000 scholarships for diplomas, bachelors, masters and PhD’s were awarded during the last five years!!
That’s revolutionary!!
…for betterment
PM Phillips just had to remind the Reg 5 crowd of one achievement by the PPP government to get their heartfelt appreciation –removal of the toll on the nearby Berbice Bridge!! At $2000 a pop, that’s some savings!!
