UNLIKE President Barack Obama in the U.S., in Guyana, the economy has been President Bharrat Jagdeo’s major achievement and strength in office, both as Finance Minister and as President. The economy grew under his watch and is partly responsible for the ruling party’s re-election in 1997, 2001, 2006. It is yet to be determined the likely impact of the economy on next year’s elections.
In the U.S., the governing Democratic Party of President Obama took a pummeling in last week’s Congressional elections losing some 60 seats in the House and six seats in the Senate and in the process lost control of the House and barely held on to the Senate.
The President lost badly because of his failure to manage the economy. Too many people lost their jobs and the President was not successful in creating new jobs to offset the losses. In addition, millions lost their homes and investments on Wall Street (stock) companies. People lost faith in Obama because of broken promises and a slow recovery which resulted in the massive defeat.
In Guyana, people still have faith in Jagdeo crediting him for the relative modernisation of the country, infrastructure development and the growth in housing. Visitors to Guyana comment about new modern houses everywhere even in remote areas. Jagdeo has taken a country that was bankrupt in 1992 and eliminated half of the US$2.2 billion debt (highest per capita debt in the world) and overseen an overall positive real growth rate. And now he has led the initiative to protect the forest and environment for our long term survival on the planet.
Yes, much remains to be done and the President could have done things differently and rightly criticised whenever he seemed to have erred. But people, visitors in particular, applaud the President for his many successes in seeking to modernise what was not too long ago a country that people had rendered hopeless because of bad economic policies of those who governed during the pre-1992 period.