In 2014, the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance For Change (AFC), then in the Opposition, voted down the budget for the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, the upgrading and construction of dozens of interior airstrips, the Amerindian Development Fund and the Amaila Hydroelectricity Project. In 2012, 2013, they did the same, voting down budgetary allocations for various critical infrastructural development projects. The people of Guyana and, particularly, the Amerindian people, were collateral damage as APNU and the AFC combined to suffocate the People’s Progressive Party’s development and transformative trajectory.
In almost four years in Government, APNU/AFC has particularly been cruel to the Amerindian people. Immediately in 2015, they terminated the contract for more than 2000 young Amerindian Community Development Officers. Since May 2015 to now, no further land title has been issued to Amerindian communities. Jobs and development have stagnated in Amerindian communities. School feeding programmes, the $10,000 per child school programme, the availability of medicines and many other entitlement programmes have been terminated or restricted. The road between Linden and Lethem has become a deathtrap. Every single promise they made to the Amerindian communities was broken. They lied to the people before May 2015, promising them a better life, they continue their wanton lies today, even as people everywhere in Guyana struggle.
Faced with an impending early election, APNU/AFC is not only wantonly lying to the people right now, it is not only lying recklessly, it is insulting the intelligence of ordinary citizens. President Granger and 19 of his Cabinet Ministers went and visited 22 Amerindian Villages in Region 9 this past weekend, claiming it is a government practice to visit the people. For almost four years, this is the first such visit and attention given to the Amerindian people by this Government. During the visit, a number of promises were made to the Amerindian people, with total disregard to the lies they told before they were elected and not recognising they were insulting the intelligence of people.
The Infrastructure Minister, David Patterson, told the Amerindian community and the residents of Lethem that APNU/AFC planned on investing US$4 billion (GY$850 billion) in building the Lethem Airstrip into an international airport. This fantastic sum is more than four times the total annual budget of Guyana, the entire 2019 Budget being about GY$200 billion. I read this announcement with total disbelief, since the transformation of the Cheddi Jagan International Airport cost about US$150 million, less than three per cent of the cost Patterson proposed for the Lethem Airport. His announcement was boldly enshrined into the headline of the Sunday Chronicle and widely communicated on social media by the Department of Public Information. One of Minister Patterson’s colleagues, the Business Minister, one of the few who did not travel to Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo), claimed it might have been a mistake and, maybe, the Infrastructure Minister meant $4 billion and not US$4 billion. At that point, one knew already that Patterson lied because for such a large project, Cabinet must have approved it and yet Minister Gaskin was left to guess, hearing it for the first time.
At least 48 hours later, the announcement still stood as a headline in the Sunday Chronicle and was still aggressively disseminated across social media by the Department of Public Information. I waited to hear if the Infrastructure Minister, the Chronicle and the Department of Public Information will correct the statement. But 48 hours elapsed and no correction. Eventually, the incredulity and absurdity of the promise forced the Government to mutter a timid correction that the real promise is to spend US$4 million to just upgrade the Lethem airstrip. It was such a low-keyed downgrading of the promise that to this day, several days after, most people have not seen or heard the denial. Clearly, it was another wild, false promise; promising heaven on earth to Lethem and Region Nine.
Minister Patterson and his APNU/AFC colleagues believe wild promises are a viable substitute for a real development programme. People know APNU/AFC is good for promises, but are clueless when it comes to development. APNU/AFC is living in “la la land”, refusing to recognise that the Guyanese people know their lies and their wild promises. APNU/AFC lied when they promised public servants, teachers and sugar workers a 20 per cent annual increase in wages and salaries, never to close a sugar factory, to give rice farmers $9000 per bag of paddy, to reduce VAT to under 12 per cent, give jobs to all UG graduates within their first 12 months in Government, constitutional reforms within 100 days, to end corruption. As election approaches, the lies will become more fantastic and the promises more wild. Buckle up.
