Joey Jagan predicts PPP victory at 2020 polls

– urges party to address public perceptions

Victory may have just eluded the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) in the last General and Regional Elections in 2015, but according to Dr. Cheddi “Joey” Jagan, the son of the party’s late founder, that party is likely to return to governance.
Speaking recently during an Indian Action Committee-sponsored event in honour of his father, former President Dr. Cheddi Jagan, “Joey” pointed to the party’s track record of bouncing back stronger than ever from defeat.
“I come from the PPP. I grew up in the PPP. So I have sympathy for the PPP. I will

always have sympathy for (them). I feel the PPP is the birth of politics in this country, and will end up as the party to carry this country forward eventually. Everybody will come back to the PPP, just like it started. That’s what is going to happen,” he predicted.
“If you understand history, the PPP is like the Romans. The Romans took a beating from Hannibal in one afternoon and the Romans came back with two armies three months later. So the PPP are like the Romans. You can knock them down, you can hit them down. They will come back.”
He urged the party in the meantime to address the perceptions of the party held by the public. According to the junior Jagan, addressing these issues will be key to the party’s return to the seat of governance.
Also speaking during the event was PPP Member of Parliament Vickram Bharrat, who fielded questions as to whether the party had moved away from Jagan’s founding principles. He had refuted suggestions that the party no longer reflected

Jagan’s ideologies, while noting that as time progressed, the PPP has evolved.
“I know this has been a burning question, something finding its way around the media and the circles: that the PPP is moving away from Cheddi Jagan’s principles and teachings. But as a young person within the PPP, I want to say the party is grounded along Cheddi Jagan lines. Sometimes we tend not to differentiate between government and party.
“Sometimes we tie the party and Government actions into each other, and we say that the Government between 97 and 2015 did not act in this way and that way. But it is a different era, and we often say, maybe if Jagan was alive he would have taken these decisions that our leaders are taking today.
“One famous comment he (Jagan) made is: we must learn to walk within raindrops. It means that as time moves, as people change, it may require different ideological thinking, policies, and you must adopt it. As time changes, we have to change with it too.”
Taking on suggestions of a fraction within the party, Bharrat noted that, like any “family”, there will be disagreements and dissenters among the party leaders. But he noted that when the party shows its face, it is a united one.
Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo, who is also the PPP General Secretary, has

long been publicly confident of a PPP win at the polls. He has repeatedly referred to large numbers of persons formerly loyal to the coalition making the crossover to PPP out of disillusionment over the Government’s actions.
The IAC event was in honour of Dr. Jagan’s 100 birth anniversary. Cheddi Berret Jagan was born on March 22, 1918, at Plantation Port Mourant, British Guiana. He was a politician and union activist who, in 1953, became the first popularly-elected Prime Minister of British Guiana (now Guyana).
He headed the country’s Government again from 1957 to 1964, after which the People’s National Congress (PNC) retained power. That was until late former President Desmond Hoyte ran and lost to the PPP in 1992, after which Jagan returned to power until his death in 1997.
From there, the PPP/C’s grip on political power remained strong, until the 2011 General and Regional Elections when it lost parliamentary control. As a result, a few years before the 2015 election, then President Donald Ramotar ruled Guyana in a minority Government.
The APNU/AFC narrowly won the 2015 General Election, securing 206,817 votes, while the PPP/Civic accumulated 201,457 votes, a difference of 5360 votes, which brought an end to over two decades of PPP dominance in government. The APNU/AFC secured 33 seats in the 11th Parliament of Guyana, while the PPP/C received 32 seats.