THE People’s Progressive Party (PPP) in a statement published in Thunder, the Party’s official organ, warned that electoral rigging would take place in the 1968 elections. It said that the PNC regime was giving Guyanese residents overseas the right to vote and anticipated that some 42,000 would be given the right to vote. The PPP also charged that proxy voting would be used to rig the elections and that the PNC was in control of the election machinery. The Party deemed these acts “the final assault on democratic principles and the Parliamentary process.”
Dr. Cheddi Jagan, this year, wrote and published “Anatomy of Poverty in Guyana” which advocated that Guyana’s future depended on simultaneous agricultural and industrial development. He pointed out that Latin America was a perfect example of world poverty and food shortages. Food shortages, he said, come from feudal land ownership coupled with capitalistic ejection of farmers from occupied lands and dumping them into the growing labour market.
PPP Leader Dr. Cheddi Jagan led a protest march to protest the many irregularities in the National Registration for voters which denied thousands of their right to vote. Units of the Police and Army were called out to stem the protests.
The December 16, 1968 elections, were, as predicted, rigged. The PNC which by this time had dumped its coalition partner the United Force, claimed 55.%, the PPP 30% and the UF 7%. The 1964 elections had given the PPP 46%, the PNC 40% and the UF 12%.
Pictured are Dr. Cheddi Jagan and his wife Mrs. Janet Jagan celebrating a victory in 1961, the last elections before the controversial 1968 polls.