AS the political temperature keeps rising for the May 11 General and Regional elections, the governing PPP/C has the special responsibility to sensitise the electorate on its record of achievements, in various sectors, across Guyana and resist the temptations to engage in negativities that’s so much a feature of the campaign by Opposition parties which have nothing of substance to share with voters at home and abroad.

After all, today’s primary positions-seeking power-campaigners are ex-PNC and ex-PPP parliamentarians and activists. In an earlier editorial on ‘Boastful Talk, Elusive Plans’, we had noted that “bad-mouthing and political slander may be easy for those more obsessed with positions than what can really foster national unity for national development…”

It was, therefore, encouraging to note that during this past week platform speakers of the governing party were elucidating with passion some of the more high profile successes of the PPPC. Two separate examples were readily highlighted, namely – the strides in economic development (as recognised by international and regional institutions and agencies) and the education sector.

As Attorney General and Legal Affairs Minister, Anil Nandlall, recalled at a public meeting last week under successive terms of the PPPC’s stewardship in government – with the end of rigged elections by the PNC from October 1992 – Guyana has been “transformed into a middle-income developing country” in contrast to its humiliation as one of the world’s poorest and most highly-indebted country (a ‘HIPIC’ state) when suffering under dictatorial and corrupt governance was the norm.
For her part, Minister of Education Priya Manickchand, opted to provide a specific focus on her portfolio with highlights on significant gains achieved and varyingly noted by educators, at home and abroad, among them government representatives, institutions and organisations.
These gains in the educational sector have been well chronicled, but since the Opposition parties and traditional critics of the Guyana Government cannot offer any commendation, particularly in an election period, silence becomes an expedient posture.

Nevertheless, it is to be expected that at least highlights of the “patterns of progress” from October 1992 to May 2015 under democratically elected PPP/C-led governments would be among informative materials to be made available to Guyanese, at home and abroad, in time to make their objective assessments on the quality of governance in comparison to the regular diet of falsehood and recriminations that keep flowing from the ‘coalition’ that’s still in formation between the PNC and AFC and otherwise marketed as APNU+AFC for Decision Day on May 11.