In the 2020 election campaign, the PPP promised that university tuition fees would be eliminated within the first term of the new Government should the PPP win the election. The PPP won the election, and it has repeated the promise that tuition fees for UG would be eliminated by 2025, within the first term of the Irfaan Ali-led PPP Government.
There is no ambiguity about the promise: tuition fees will be eliminated by 2025. The PPP still have Budgets 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 to keep this promise. But if one listens to the Opposition, especially the AFC, one would think the PPP had promised it would do so immediately. No such promise was made. And given the track record of the PPP, especially since August 2020, there is every likelihood that this promise would be kept.
In politics, people have come to expect that hypocrisy is an integral component of the political landscape. But there is still an expectation that politicians would have some respect for people, and avoid shamelessness. I saw twice, in recent times, Khemraj Ramjattan and the AFC demanding that the PPP Government immediately eliminate all fees from the University of Guyana.
Ramjattan claimed that the PPP is breaking its promise. He knows full well that he is not being truthful. He knows full well that he is misrepresenting what the PPP promised.
But what is particularly galling is that this is the same man who joined his colleagues in the PNC in 2015, during that election campaign, and vigorously promised that, should they be elected, they would eliminate university fees immediately. They did so on the campaign platform during public meetings across Guyana. They did so on TV programmes. They did so in their manifesto. As it turned out, the APNU/AFC Coalition, really another name for the PNC, was elected to take the reins of Government, with David Granger as the President. In their 2015 Budget, they did not, as promised, eliminate tuition fees at UG. In fact, Budgets 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 did not provide for the elimination of tuition fees at UG. They broke their promise.
Ramjattan was Minister of Public Security, but, as Leader of the AFC and cabinet member, he never once spoke out against the shameless disregard of a promise they collectively made to the people of Guyana.
Ramjattan and his colleagues in the AFC were not just bystanders when the APNU/AFC coalition increased UG fees, they were actively involved in the travesty of increasing UG tuition fees. It was not just tuition fees at UG, they also increased other fees at UG. In addition, they introduced VAT on Education, VAT on text books and other educational materials. They introduced VAT on computers and on internet data, including Wi-Fi. These are critical aspects of students’ lives at a university. The charlatans even removed the $10,000 “Because We Care” cash grant to school children. These grants were deemed a waste of time. Some of them argued that the university’s fees were too low, and they should be at least US$1,000.
These are the same people who today are demanding that the tuition fees at UG be removed immediately. One of the arguments that Ramjattan now makes is that with 3,000 students graduating annually, it means that the vast majority of students who graduate from high school do not attend university; and that, if made free, more students would attend university. But did Ramjattan not know this before 2020? Is it only now that, if made free, more students would go to UG?
Ramjattan wants oil money to be used to eliminate UG’s tuition fees. Other than the US$18 million that the APNU/AFC Coalition Government hid, and then stashed away, no oil money has been used yet. The first money outside the EXXON US$18 million that will be used will be used in accordance with the NRF in 2022. If Ramjattan is so concerned about our young people and their education, did he say anything when the US$18 million was being kept a secret for whatever untoward purpose? Suddenly Ramjattan wants more money to be poured into UG. The APNU/AFC Coalition had five years to do so, but they did not increase the subvention to UG in any meaningful way, other than increasing UG’s finances via tuition increase.
It is sheer hypocrisy today that Ramjattan is shedding crocodile tears for the university and the students.
But hypocrisy is not foreign to Ramjattan and the AFC. In fact, hypocrisy is part and parcel of their persona. Before 2015, when in Opposition, Ramjattan and the AFC wanted 20% wage increase annually for sugar workers and the Public Servants. He, together with Moses Nagamootoo, deemed themselves the “champion of sugar workers”. They went around in 2011 and 2015, promising sugar workers 20% pay increase. They screamed to hell and back that no sugar estate would be closed. Yet, these same charlatans betrayed the sugar workers when they became the Government. They were not just silent when sugar estates were closed, when sugar workers had their wages frozen between 2015 and 2019, when the annual production incentives and the weekly production incentives were watered down and then eliminated; they actively defended those actions by the Coalition. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds.
