Guyana is now in free fall, from the teachers to the Police

Guyana is now in free fall: From the teachers to the police; from the nurses to City Hall employees and councillors, the country has just about ground to a halt.

Granger is saying that he has nothing to do with rice. Sugar is dead! The youths who supported the Coalition have been kicked to the side and trampled upon by the military dinosaurs. There are no plans for employment; and crime continues to dominate in every region of the country.

The country – because of its protracted and perpetuated hopelessness – continues to bleed from daily suicides, even as the politicians shuttle around in their government issued, air-conditioned SUVs, on their fat-cat salaries, waiting for oil money.

The Opposition is laughing at the Government because after all the corruption proven, there have not been any arrests or convictions. Something stinks to the high heavens in the manner in which the government is functioning.

Imagine, the government is going to spend billions to level and prepare former sugarcane fields in preparation to plant rice. Yes. The same government which cannot manage what they already have been entrusted to manage, is now going to take on the management of rice. Someone who has the equipment to do the levelling and preparing of the sugar fields (and we all know who he is), has convinced the inept government to spend billions in converting the lands into rice fields.

Already private rice farmers are not selling their paddy. The United Republican Party (URP) has been visiting the rice farmers in Essequibo and Berbice and we have seen, literally, billions of dollars in paddy stacked to the ceilings in hundreds of barns across the Country.

Now the government will be planting and selling rice. Can anyone hazard a guess as to whose rice the Guyana Rice Marketing Board will sell first? And to think that many of the rice farmers switched from the PPP to the AFC in order to give this Coalition a chance. The URP is convinced that this is not about rice.

This latest move by government is to further enrich a few of the cronies of the Coalition. But like everything else, nothing will stop them from proceeding with their plans to rob the taxpayers in all efforts at fattening their bank accounts and those of their loyal business buddies. These are PPP tactics 2.0.

The United Republican Party is also watching to see the unfolding of the wage talks. Imagine the government pledged that they will engage the unions in Collective Bargaining, yet they have ended the wage discussions with an arbitrary percentage that they began the talks with. Where is the ‘bargaining’ if you came into the discussion with a figure and left with that exact figure unchanged?

What the URP is really watching to see is if the unions will roll over and play dead, like they did under the PPP/C. The unions are made up mostly of folks who support the Coalition. The Coalition told their supporters that a new day will dawn if the government is changed. Their supporters went out early and in droves to make sure the government was changed.

Now let’s see if the union bosses will take the usual position that some have argued is a “sell-out”. Are some of the union bosses still for sale?

Finally, the Minister of Communities, Bulkan, said that Royston King and Mayor Pat Chase-Green, acted illegally in removing the vendors from Robb Street. What the Minister did not say is what disciplinary measures he will initiate against his subordinate. After all, King is only there because the minister put him there.

The URP believes that it would be a travesty of justice and a very unfair act to have King escape this without any repercussions. How can minister allow King to continue to benefit from his livelihood when he had taken away the livelihood of so many families?

There is this notion among the PNC political bigwigs that their supporters are so docile and loyal that come elections time, they will support them rather than the PPP.

The URP hopes that the PNC supporters, especially the youths, wake up and understand that their votes are worth a lot, and that whomsoever they vote for need to treat them with the respect and attention they deserve.

The Grange- led Coalition is way over their heads; they are not listening to anyone outside their bubble; they have cast aside their core supporters and the County is suffering immensely. Something has got to give.

Yours truly,

Vishnu Bandhu,

Leader, URP