A countrywide determination to restore democracy in Guyana gave rise to a national avalanche that eventually swept the PNC out of the corridors of power and installed, for the first time in decades, a constitutionally-elected government in October of 1992.

This was indeed the dawn of a new era and a new broom that gradually, miraculously, transformed Guyana into an unparalleled dynamic of social development and economic growth.

This growth and development, however, are under threat once again by the very people who took Guyana and Guyanese to subterranean levels of international growth indices before a PPP/C Government, under the guidance of this country’s foremost freedom fighter and the Father of the Nation, Dr. Cheddi Jagan, and successive PPP/C presidents, especially the ‘Architect of Modern Guyana’ and crafter of The Poverty Reduction Strategy, the National Development Strategy, the LCDS, et al, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo; and which is currently being continued by His Excellency President Donald Ramotar.

However, the PNC, even reconfigured as APNU, joined by the mini AFC, has continued its anti-developmental strategies, causing retrogression in and impeding many areas where transformational projects could have tremendously benefited the Guyanese people, despite President Ramotar’s invitations and encouragement to Opposition parties to have tripartite talks with the ultimate intention of building trust and eventuating on consensual positions on nation-building thrusts and activities.

Governing the nation during the last two decades and creating a growth pattern with a consistent upward trajectory has not been an easy proposition for the PPP/C, because the PNC, in its new avatar of APNU and its ally the AFC, have driven and precipitated a continuum of destructive actions that caused much angst and retrogression in the fortunes of this nation, with many major developmental and job and wealth-creational initiatives being stymied and/or stopped cold by the combined Opposition.

But the country descended into a new low with the new configuration in the National Assembly, which gave the combined Opposition a majority of one seat, acquired with six votes, and today the ugly head of the Opposition is reared to strike once again into the heart of the nation.
Non-compliance with Financial Action Task Force (FATF) regulations regarding countering of money laundering and terrorism in the world would visit recalcitrant nation states with such punitive ‘blacklisting’ that would take them into semblances of Guyana under PNC administration.  Unfortunately for Guyana, this nation is being held to ransom by a vengeful combined Opposition, which refuses to support the vital passage of the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) Bill.

Their power-drunk and vengeful grandstanding has reached a level where their conditions for support of this vital bill has put this nation between the devil and the deep blue sea – that the Government accepts their recommendations for amendments, which will revert Guyana to the days of the Draconian rule of the PNC; or else non-support of the bill with a consequential blacklisting by FATF, which will transpose this nation again to a socio-economic landscape and ethos of want, hunger and hopelessness.

Would the “new” leadership caucus of the PNC decide to work with the PPP/C administration to take the nation forward; or would it be the ‘same old; same old’ situation, with the nation being collateral damage in the joint Opposition’s juggling/struggling for power and self-aggrandisement? Only time will tell; and the nation waits.