APPARENTLY STUNG by criticisms levelled against it on Friday by President Bharrat Jagdeo, the main opposition People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) yesterday fired its own political salvo at his administration as arrangements continue for new parliamentary and presidential elections in October or November this year.
President Jagdeo told journalists at a news briefing that on the basis of official results from the last two general elections (2001 and 2006), the recently-formed grouping of parties known as A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) should realise that the outcome of the coming elections could not be in its favour.
After describing the small parties that are identified in the ‘Partnership’ (such as WPA, GAP and NFA) as “deadbeat parties,” President Jagdeo said he was having “a hard time” wrapping his  head around the idea that the PNC has (in effect) been dissolved with the emergence of APNU for the coming elections.
The President was specific in claiming that a David Granger-led APNU “cannot win the elections” because of the political baggage he carries from his years of involvement with the PNC, including the conception and propagation of that party’s doctrine of ‘paramountcy’ under the late President Forbes Burnham.
“So the PNC is gone,” he concluded, “replaced by APNU for the elections; and for the first time in our history since independence, in fact pre-independence,  the PNC is gone (from the contest of national elections)…”
The President said he could not “grasp the strategy of  APNU” under Granger as its presidential candidate.
Already caught up in verbal clashes with The Alliance for Change (AFC) about the credibility of their respective claims of ground support among eligible voters, the PNCR has chosen to ignore APNU and go directly after President Jagdeo, in an attempt to scoff at the tremendous progress of the PPP-led administration over four successive terms.
In a press statement yesterday, the PNCR surprisingly opted to engage in traditional emotional claims instead of providing specific data to support allegations of mismanagement and use of state resources in favour of the governing party’s presidential candidate, Donald Ramotar.
The PNCR’s claims against the administration include, for example, the statement that “the PPP/C must give account to the Guyanese people as to why friends of the government have abundant wealth, while citizens pay-cheques finish before the 10th of the month…”
If such an accusation could be dismissed as idle pre-election talk, there is more in the following statement, to amuse the public at large, including those who may have voted for the PNCR at the 2006 general elections.
“The (President’s) crystal ball (for the coming elections) seems unable,” according to the PNCR,  “to tell the citizens of Guyana why, after 19 years of rule, the government now seems able to find money for election year goodies for key constituencies, but money cannot be found  for raising public sector (workers) salaries; for providing a safe place for abused women; for ending drug-trafficking and piracy; for sustainable development of the hinterland…”
AMUSING indeed. What kind of thinking, research and planning could result in such an infantile approach to the challenges Guyana faces to maintain social and economic progress, as documented, and retain the respect of its regional and international partners? The PNCR, as the only real party in what is being presented as APNU for the coming elections, is clearly burdened with a massive credibility problem.