Race-based politics will not succeed
– accuses PNCR, AFC of using  racism & racial rhetoric to divide nation once more
PRESIDENT Bharrat  Jagdeo has condemned the electoral strategy of the main opposition People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) and the small Alliance For Change (AFC) political parties  of  using  racism and racial rhetoric to divide the nation once more.

According to him, this is the strategy or mechanism being blatantly used by  both the PNCR and AFC in a desperate effort to have a chance at winning the upcoming general election.

“This guy (Saisenarine Singh) has to be crazy! He had a project in the Government and he messed up – a project that was funded by IFAD, (but he) messed up the project…Every agency he went to he was fired from, and you think I would put a man like Saisenarine, when I had people of the calibre of Ashni Singh…and other young bright leaders in the PPP working with us?  He was mad. Now he is the AFC’s economic guru – a man whom I rejected…can’t even run a cake shop.” – President Jagdeo

However, the Head-of-State emphatically declared that such dangerous politicking will not succeed, because Guyanese are enlightened today, and will not fall prey to the base instincts and divisive strategies of opposition politicians.

Posing the question as to why Raphael Trotman refused to take a position in the party he helped to create, and instead conceded Khemraj Ramjattan as the presidential candidate of the AFC, President Jagdeo asked what confidence could Trotman have in Ramjattan, who  got only four votes during the last elections in a village where he has in excess of fifty family members.

This drew loud and appreciative laughter and applause from the huge crowd gathered at the Babu John crematorium  in Port Mourant, Berbice on Sunday last during the commemorative event marking 14 years since Guyana lost its greatest freedom fighter and leader, Dr. Cheddi Jagan.

The president, during a stirring feature address at the ceremony,  mused that this is an indication that Trotman himself does not have confidence in his chances at the next elections.

He revealed that a strong supporter and “economic guru” of the AFC is another former member of the PPP, who also became bitter and vengeful because he did not get the position he sought in the PPP government.

According to the president, Saisenarine Singh had applied to him for the position of Finance Minister, but he was forced to reject him because of his terrible track record of incompetency in every position that he had previously held.
“This guy has to be crazy”, exclaimed President Jagdeo.
“He had a project in the Government and he messed up – a project that was funded by IFAD, (but he) messed up the project…Every agency he went to he was fired from, and you think I would put a man like Saisenarine, when I had people of the calibre of Ashni Singh…and other young bright leaders in the PPP working with us?  He was mad. Now he is the AFC’s economic guru – a man whom I rejected…can’t even run a cake shop.”
Positing that the opposition thinks that running the country is a show, the President declared that they have no commitment to the ideals that the PPP believes in, such as providing every person in the country the opportunity to own a piece of land on which they can build a home, with every family getting better access to doctors, getting computers in their homes so that even children of poor families can access new wave technology.
This latter, he said, is entirely funded by the Government of Guyana.
According to the president, essential to the PPP’s vision for the country is the provision to the youths of equal education and employment opportunities, with better-paying jobs as well, because governing the country is about serving the Guyanese people, which is the distinction between the PPP and the opposition parties.  That, he said, is the reason that the PPP has no fear about winning the next elections.

BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS

However, he warned party members against complacency  because someone, like David Granger, could prevail against the PPP as a result of the young people who do not know the history and the role he (Granger) played during the Burnham years, being persuaded by clever semantics. So he tasked the older members of the party to educate and inform their children of the realities of their past so that it is not repeated in their present by the same powers who are once more seeking to rule the land and the people.

“They (young Guyanese) have very little memory of the period when people used to be beaten routinely when they were lining up for food and had gotten out of the line, and when the police, at that time, had instructions to check people’s pots to see what they were cooking …it sounds like a fairy tale to many of the young people, but that was the reality of life in Guyana (under PNC rule); and when the soldiers were instructed…many of them did not want to do it, to come and chase people away from polling stations and take the ballot boxes to a place (where) the PNC would unscrew the bottom of the wooden boxes and pad them with votes; and when people used to cry out of frustration, because they had no dignity in this land.”

The President also stressed that older people need to tell their younger family members, who may think that the freedoms they today enjoy were always there, of how far this country has moved from the repressive era of the colonial and Burnham years, when the armed forces supported the PNC in the era of party paramountcy, when Granger was a proponent of the oppressive strategies of those years.

The president concurred that, in the spirit of Cheddi Jagan, the government does not want to revert to the past for the purposes of recrimination, because the PPP’s vision is firmly fixed on the future; but he warned against those who murdered innocent people in the past and have blood on their hands, and who denied the nation its basic rights, who propose to return in the guise of democrats and say they want to take the country forward.

“They don’t have clean hands, they don’t have a clean slate, and they do not have a vision for bringing people together.”

Condemning Granger’s sanctimonious pronouncements and his condemnation of a ‘shoot to kill’ call by the President, who encouraged police officers to defend their lives by shooting criminals who are pointing guns at them (police), the President wondered why Granger and the other opposition leaders refuse to support the call for police ranks to defend their lives when they are under threat by ruthless criminals.

He rejected the AFC’s call for outsiders to come to Guyana and tell Guyanese how to run their country, when “Britain has had the worst economic problems for thirty years, and the US has the same now.”

“AFC believes that these are the people who will chart the course for Guyana.  They will chart the course for us, yes, but not as equal people.  We saw that in the 50s and the 60s.  We saw how their interference affected this country, and how they supported a dictatorship when it suited their interest…We do not believe that we must farm out intellectual work…We have a good mature leadership and tons of bright young people coming into the PPP, filling our ranks, giving leadership for the future.”

He said celebrating Cheddi Jagan’s life is not merely about recognizing his achievements, but it is also to ensure that his struggles do not go in vain, but are recognized, and that party members help to propagate (the knowledge) of the nature of the struggle that he waged, and the conditions under which he waged those struggles.