PPP/C going into 2025 election campaign having kept its promises – Jagdeo

– says main challenger APNU/AFC weighed down by credibility crisis

In the five years since the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) returned to office in 2020, the party has been able to achieve practically all of its plans set out in its manifesto, a fact that Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo contrasted with A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change’s (APNU/AFC) track record of broken promises.
During his recent press conference, the Vice President addressed campaign flyers emanating from the opposition, one of which contained a number of promises including dramatic increases to wages and salaries. Jagdeo noted that the electorate would rightly be sceptical of such promises from the opposition, considering their lacklustre track record.
“A plan has to be considered and well thought out, and must show a source for the generation of wealth, apart from expenditure of revenue. And so, clearly the electorate will see this more and more as they get closer to elections; but the believability would be an important factor,” Jagdeo expressed.

With election expected this year, the Vice President noted that the 2025 election campaign season will hinge on the credibility of the parties trying to convince Guyanese to vote for them. Jagdeo noted that APNU/AFC have a serious credibility hurdle, considering their 2015-2020 term, and contrasted this with the PPP/C.
“If you look at our manifestos historically, and the ones we’ve come out with in 2020, in the first three years we had completed – even with COVID – 90 per cent of our promises. And now, this year, we’ve managed to complete every promise that we made. We’ve done free university education as we said. The pensioners got paid, a doubling of old age pension. In the five years.”
“The children got their $50,000 that we promised in the five years. The joint services got back their bonus. We have increased the public servants (wage). We didn’t make a huge hullabaloo about the per centage increases to public servants. We promised to improve the conditions of service,” Jagdeo explained.
According to Jagdeo, if one is to do a side-by-side comparison of the 2020 and 2025 budgets produced by the PPP/C, one would see that the public sector earnings have grown by some $105 billion.
“Like APNU is promising 35 per cent increase… they put the 35 per cent in the flyer. And when we ask them, is it 35 per cent over per year or 35 per cent over the five-year term… they’re yet to answer, because if its 35 per cent per year, if you compound it, it will be over 200 per cent. And the wages and salaries now, are significant.”
“If we put something in writing, we’re not going to be making wild promises about what we will do in the next five years. But you can rest assured that once its written and launched as a manifesto, that the entire Government will work at fulfilling it. Whatever we put there, will be done.”
He also reminded of some of the basic promises the PPP/C has made, such as working to ensure that every Guyanese can own their own home, have a first world healthcare at no cost to them, and better than first world education, with a focus on quality.
While no date has been set, the 2025 elections are likely to be held in November. It will follow the March 2020 General and Regional Elections that were embroiled in controversy following blatant attempts by the then APNU/AFC Administration to rig the elections in order to stay in power.
The PPP/C was sworn into office five months after the March 2, 2020 polls. Several senior staff of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) along with political activists are currently before the courts for over 30 electoral fraud charges.