The PPP always prioritises unity, PNC/WPA are merchants of division

Dear Editor,
President Irfaan Ali has been relentless in promoting unity among the Guyanese people. President Ali has invested in the fight to bring our people together as one country, with a stake for all. In embracing unity as a vehicle for rapid development, President Ali has strengthened and elevated further a core issue for the PPP from its inception in 1950. Just as building infrastructure, creating employment, improving health and education, ensuring Guyanese have their own homes and universal coverage for potable water, etc., President Ali and the PPP believes that unity of our people is not just a peace dividend, it is a core economic development driver.
Elections 2025 will be an opportunity for the Guyanese people to loudly pronounce for the benefit of present and future political leaders that unity is paramount and that anyone that promotes division will be rejected. It will be an opportunity for the Guyanese people to forthrightly reject all those persons who openly promote racial and ethnic division in Guyana. President Ali has firmly placed One Guyana on the electoral agenda.
The drift of young members of the PNC to the PPP is explicit support for President Ali’s One Guyana platform. LGE 2023 gave an early glimpse of the success of One Guyana. While bastions of PNC support in Linden and Georgetown persisted in LGE 2023, cracks in the PNC’s dominance were visible. The PPP made measurable inroads in Georgetown and Linden, showing electoral strengths in those areas that were never ever seen in our political history.
In New Amsterdam where the PNC has dominated throughout its history, the PPP almost defeated the PNC in LGE 2023. In fact, the betting for Elections 2025 is that the PPP will emerge as the leading political party in that town. There can be little doubt that President Ali’s One Guyana has been a resounding success.
The growing resonance of One Guyana with the Guyanese people forced the leader of the opposition, Aubrey Norton, this past week to declare that the PNC/WPA coalition for Elections 2025 will fight to end racial and ethnic divisions as their number one priority. This should, of course, be the number one priority for all political parties. Only the PPP has a history of consistently fighting for unity in Guyana, with President Ali carrying on the tradition of past PPP leaders. President Ali’s success in promoting unity has been unprecedented. Norton, for all his faults, recognizes the success of President Ali’s One Guyana message and governance.
Norton recognizes that this is not the usual political sloganeering. It is something real and it has galvanized support from across the country.
The problem Norton has is that PNC and WPA are Guyana’s dominant merchants of racism and ethnic divisions. Were these two political parties honest and committed in the fight against ethnic division, their own abandonment of racial politics will in itself contribute to the end of race-based politics in our country. It means they must acknowledge and apologize for their well-documented roles in stoking racial and ethnic division. Race-based politics has been their bread and butter.
The question, therefore, is how committed they are to this promise. It would go a far way if they were to apologize to the nation for their past promotion and practice of race-based politics. David Hinds as the leader of the WPA has had the most despicable behavior of anyone in Guyana over the last few years when it comes to racist politics. How can Norton champion healing of racial division, while at the same time refusing to distant himself and the PNC from the racists rhetoric and threats that have been emanating from the WPA?
Norton is burdened with the PNC’s albatross – a deficit of trust. Who exactly believes Norton’s declaration that healing racial and ethnic division is his and the PNC/WPA coalition’s number one priority?
The PNC has always been a sloganeering party. The most recent slogan being the “Good Life for All”. Recall all the classics – “Sleep Less, Eat Less, Work More”, “Feed, House and Clothe the Nation” and many more. The PNC’s record in all of these were dismal failures because they accomplished exactly the opposite. For the “Good Life”, David Granger told young people that it is not the responsibility of government to create jobs, that they must help themselves by selling “dog food and plantain chips”. For the “feed, house and clothe” the nation, we became a nation of squatters and we depended on barrels from the diaspora to feed and clothe ourselves.
They had one unqualified sloganeering success – “slow fyah, mo’fyah”, with violence mainly targeting Indo-Guyanese. Today, the vast majority of PNC supporters have rejected that pathway. They want peace and unity. But neither party is willing to Abdon that strategy, fearing they have no other option to retain their base. The AFC is in the same dilemma.
The PNC has for its entire history been a hardcore promoter of racial and ethnic division in our country. No political party has done more to promote racism and ethnic division than the PNC. In government between 1964 and 1992 and between 2015 and 2020, the PNC unapologetically practiced racial discrimination.
Since the death of Walter Rodney, the WPA begun its descent into racial and ethnic division. With men such as David Hinds elevated into leadership, the WPA’s entanglement into racial and ethnic politics became robust, rapid and obscene. This is the same man who is proud of demanding that the people of Buxton must not buy anything from Mon Repose which translate to Afro-Guyanese must boycott Indo-Guyanese vendors.
The drift away from the PNC is one of the repercussions of the PNC and its surrogates in the WPA and others doubling down on racial and ethnic politics. The vast majority of the Guyanese people want unity. They find comfort in President Ali’s unconditional embrace of unity and love among our people.
Elections 2025 is a referendum on the choices political leaders make on national unity. Young PNC supporters and many older ones have opted to contribute to nation-building and they find President Ali’s and the PPP’s One Guyana vision more aligned with theirs. Therefore, for Elections 2025, they have decided to send the message of unity out loud and clear.

Sincerely,
Dr Leslie Ramsammy