Tomorrow will be one of the most significant days in the history of our country. As citizens of this land, we have been conferred by our constitution with our inalienable right to choose who will govern us. That right was won after centuries of struggle by our ancestors. While we know the right is inalienable, we also know to our cost that it was ripped from us by the PNC that blatantly and flagrantly rigged elections between 1968 and 1985. When they were not rigging, they weaponised our right by coming out into the streets after every subsequent election they lost to violently “protest” and create mayhem.
In the last elections of 2020, even those who will be exercising their franchise for the very first time would – and should – remember how the “kinder, gentler” PNC of David Granger attempted to rig the elections. This was from within the institution – GECOM – that was established to ensure our right to vote was implemented and secured. Several of the miscreants are still before the courts for their perfidious actions. This proclivity to subvert state institutions – not only GECOM – which are constitutionally, legally and morally supposed to protect our rights – has unfortunately been a feature of PNC governance. Understandably, it has corroded the public trust in almost all state institutions – egregiously so in the case of the Police Force, for which successive PPP Governments have had to take blame even as they attempt to rectify the damage.
Today all our citizens must reflect on Guyanese elections in general and these elections in particular. Democratic elections were devised to select Governments so that “we the people” can place those who we think are best suited to be in charge of our affairs. Sadly, because of our history – where our several groups were pitted against each other at elections – we tended to “vote for our own” since we did not trust “others” to treat us fairly. And when “our own” was in power, we expected them to “take care of us first”.
But this election is different. No party can win the elections “fair and square” any more by appealing to any one group since no one group constitutes a majority any longer. While the PPP has always pointed out it stood for the poor and the “working class”, the impoverished nature of the economy led those from outside its base to claim their lived experience of poverty was caused by the PPP. This is even though macro studies like Household Income and Expenditure Surveys (HIES) showed that most Guyanese were in the same boat.
At these elections, however, the PPP has had five years at the helm of Government while oil revenues flowed into the national coffers. Therefore, it could at long last fund its programmes as articulated in its manifesto so as to benefit all Guyanese equally across regions and social groups. As such, they have an actual record for us to examine when we consider the pledges they have made in their new 2025-2030 manifesto. The PNC also has a record from 2015 to 2020, and while they did not have the oil revenues, we can evaluate their pledges that could have been fulfilled from their revenue streams. As for instance, the “substantial salary increases” they promised public servants but only bestowed on their Ministers.
The completion of the world-class suspension Demerara Harbour Bridge is emblematic of the PPP creating an infrastructural revolution in our country that undergirds its sustainable, holistic development model. When the Opposition scoffs at the PPP’s focus on infrastructure at this stage, they expose their cynical tactic to fool our people by saying, “You can’t eat bridges and roads.” They know that without proper infrastructure, businesses that will provide well-paying jobs for our citizens to feed their families with dignity will not invest here. What the PPP has done, therefore, is to balance the infrastructural development with social programmes such as an explosion of hospitals, grants and social support for pensioners and the poor.
