SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT

–Why APNU and AFC Parliamentarians behave the way they do

IT IS NOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Alliance For Change is only interested in ‘scissoring’ the budget, and not about contributing meaningfully to the 2014 Budget debate. Even its members ‘walking out’ is a well-orchestrated pretext, since they have no facts to rebut the Education Budget allocation, nor can they deny the excellent performance of the Education and Social Sector, or the social and economic development of the country as a whole!AMNA ALLY’S IDOL AND TOILET

However, the Opposition Chief Whip, Amna Ally, had to remain after her colleagues from APNU had absconded from fulfilling their duties to this nation, not because of disagreeing with her ‘bosses’, but simply because she had to extol the virtues of the worst dictator in the Western Hemisphere, the late L.F.S Burnham!

It simply boggles my mind why she would do that; but then, these people need to rewrite Guyana’s history in order to remain relevant to Guyanese politics and to dupe the populace.

Indeed, they are trying their utmost to fool and brainwash our young people!

Instead of MP Amna Ally wasting her time going around and ascertaining which school toilet or IT lab is out of order, or does not have regular electricity, she should have made a comparison of the Education sector during the time of her ‘idol’ Burnham and the entire PNC era. She should have looked at the massive development in the Education sector.

But alas! She cannot do that, because to do that would let the young people of this country become aware of the atrocities meted out to children, adults and old people during the PNC dictatorship era – the Dark Age in the history of this country!

COMPARISON AND CONTRAST
Let me briefly highlight a few:
– Children suffered from gross malnutrition, since their main diet was ‘broken rice’ and ‘rice flour’. There was no milk powder on the empty shelves, and to have a tin of milk you need to line up or have a PNC party card! It was ‘white mouth’ even among the adults.
Over 65,000 school children are now benefiting from the National School Feeding Programme! Their parents can now afford chicken, which was a luxury during the PNC dictatorship! Getting food on the table was a criminal activity during the PNC rule of terrorism!

Parents had to neglect their children because they had to join ‘Guyline’ in order to get even a pint of cooking oil and a half pound of butter. “Guyline is now gone, thanks to the PPP/C government!

Many parents ran away through the ‘backtrack’ and left their children to become juveniles and criminals. Ironically, they did that to provide for those same children! Now almost everyone is given a 10-year Us Visa.

Why is this so, MP Amna? They have no reason to run and hide! Guyana has recovered its status among the developing nations of the world.

Children were selling cigarettes by the road side during the PNC days; now they are in schools or in vocational schools learning a trade.

Your PNC government had opened the National Service to satiate the paedophilic cravings and lust of some of your ‘officers’. Child labour was the order of the day in order to survive. Many times it was the elder siblings who had to make the inevitable sacrifice.

Food was more important than education! More children are now in schools than ever before! They are being better fed in and out of school!
The school dropout rate was astronomical. Students now are encouraged to even spend their holidays doing remedial programmes in schools.

Hospitals were run down and dilapidated, and the infant mortality rate was sickening! All drugs had to be bought, and bribes were the order of the day. The hospitals are now equipped with doctors, trained nurses and an adequate supply of drugs.

School buildings were falling down, and children had to use the bushes to excrete! Billions of dollars are now spent on the construction, rehabilitation, extension and maintenance of our educational facilities. They now have access to the Learning Channel, access to Internet and free laptops to access information.

The PNC would by now have taken us back to the pre-historic days.
Many teachers ran away, while many went to other countries in search of a livelihood. Some teachers were cutting cane, catching ‘tilapia’, and planting vegetable gardens and doing whatever it takes to make ends meet! Now, every year, hundreds of teachers are being trained; they graduate and they remain on the jobs. Why?

Many children went bare-footed to school, and uniforms were worn until the backs of their wearers were exposed! Children now have grants for uniforms.

Many poor parents could not afford to send their children to school. They now have $ 10,000 to assist them.

The Amerindian children in the hinterland were treated as aliens. Now they have well equipped schools and labs, trained teachers, and there are dormitories which are fully financed by the PPP/C Government!

MP Ally, please check out the schools and dormitories at Paramakatoi and Waramadong. The beneficiaries are over 1,400 children! (But maybe the toilets are giving problems; let us know!)
Many young people from the hinterland are now qualifying as doctors as well.

The children had to line the road side in the scorching sun and wave like robots to Burnham and his foreign guests. Those days are gone. Children are now treated as dignitaries in this country! They don’t have to line up in the hot sun to salute Kabaka Burnham and friends!

The pass rates in English and Maths were in the single digits during the PNC days. Our rate of failure at CSEC was among the highest! Today we have won five out of eight CSEC Awards! Our English and Maths pass rates are now hundreds of percentage points higher than then. English is nearly 60% and Maths is nearly 40%, and will improve. The 2014 Budget has many strategies to drastically improve these!

University students, including myself, had to face the indignity of National Service, where they were starved and literally trampled upon by their illiterate masters. Many lost their self-respect and dignity there! Now billions of dollars are pumped into both campuses, and National Service/Slavery is no more.

MP Amna has a problem with the online application process and the toilet. Why do you think the UG has an administrative body?
Only 5% of the budget went to education under the PNC. The PPP/C has allocated 15.9% of the 2014 Budget to Education, and MP Amna has a problem with that.

I could go on forever. I call upon the PNC to make that comparison and provide evidence that your government was doing a ‘fantastic’ job in developing Guyana socially and economically! We can only condemn someone if we are better!

You people should walk out of Parliament forever! Shameless and barefaced art thou indeed!

COURAGE AND INTELLIGENCE
Our Minister of Education is a courageous and highly intelligent woman, and she made a flawless presentation based on facts and figures; and any CSEC student will know that you cannot write a good persuasive essay unless you use evidence backed by statistics. MP Ally’s emotional appeal to houses of defecation should be thrown right there!

Minister Manikchand has done an excellent job, and her refusal to apologise to Jaipaul Sharma spoke volumes of her courage to stand up for what she believed in. But alas! The AFC must empathise with MP Sharma, since Khemraj Ramjattan’s father, Teekah Ramjattan, was alleged to have performed sexual exploits with a female student during his tenure at Tagore Memorial High School on the Corentyne when he was the Headmaster there. So I do fully understand why he led his band of ‘bloodthirsty scissors-wielders marching through the exits of Parliament!
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, I want MP Amna Ally to reflect on the words of Martin Carter, written in the WPA paper ‘Dayclean’ in 1979. He said that ‘the PNC’s method of ensuring self-perpetuation consists of indulging in a deliberate policy of degrading people’. He further noted that “under the PNC, corruption had become a way of life in which people were made to accept that stealing, cheating, lying, bearing false witness…was a positive sign of loyalty to the regime….”

APNU’s MP Ally is still displaying that “positive sign of loyalty”!

Yours sincerely,
Haseef Yusuf
AFC Councillor/Region 6

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