APNU supporters chant but listen to PPP/C speakers
PEOPLE’S Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Presidential Candidate Donald Ramotar and other members of his campaign team held a meeting in Buxton, East Coast Demerara, Thursday afternoon, wooing villagers of the once troubled village to vote for them.
But supporters of the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) intervened, chanting support for David Granger at the venue, along the Railway Embankment Road where the Opposition party is scheduled to have a rally tomorrow.
Although the APNU chants were loud, the PPP/C speakers were given a hearing. Chairman of the proceedings was Mr. Odinga Lumumba, a resident of Buxton, and other speakers included Ms. Gail Teixeira and more persons from the community.
Lumumba told the crowd: “As you are all aware, we are facing an election on November 28. Elections are about records [and] we have to compare records in this country. Today I want to tell you a little bit about the achievements of the PPP/C while we have been in government.”
He said the PPP/C inherited a country which was in serious crisis. “The size of our economy was extremely small and the national debt was seven and a half times the size of the economy.”
Ramotar said: “We worked extremely hard and, last year in 2010, we raised the size of our economy from US$274 million in 1991 to US$2.3 billion. And we brought down the debt to less than 50 percent of the economy that we now have.”
Commenting on how Guyana was able to achieve this, he said the government concentrated its efforts and spending on the area that “we think would bring the most benefits to the Guyanese people.”
1,000 schools
He said the largest expenditure for the government is on education. “Those of you who are old enough would know that, in 1991, only 30 percent of the children who were leaving primary school found a place in the secondary. [Some] 70 percent of those children could not go to secondary school because there was no place for them. Since we came to government, we built more than 1,000 schools.”
Ramotar announced that the new television channel and the One Laptop per Family would enable Guyanese to access education and find jobs through the use of Information Technology (IT).
He highlighted the importance of the hydropower plant for Guyana’s development, saying: “By providing hydroelectric power, we will, immediately, be able to cut your light bill by some 40 percent. By having cheap energy, we will be able to encourage people to invest in manufacturing and processing of products. The whole question of adding value to our products will definitely become a factor.”
Ramotar spoke of the possibility of going a step further than simply producing bauxite in Guyana. “The time has come when we can process that bauxite into alumina and even aluminium right here in our country. Those are the things that we in the PPP/C have been working on, very very hard, to increase the capacity of our country so that we can provide more goods and services to the people.”
Before Ramotar, Prime Minister Sam Hinds appealed to the people to listen to the message and make up their minds. He appealed to them to vote PPP/C come Elections Day November 28.
“But if you don’t listen to us, you wouldn’t know what we are. We come to the people of Guyana on our performance over the past 19 years. I think that everyone in Guyana would have to accept that there has been great improvement all around in our country,” he said. “We come to you on the basis that we have worked to bring improvement to all Guyanese. “Everyone in Guyana has had some improvement.”
Presidential Advisor on Governance, Teixeira said Friday evening’s event was a reflection of Buxton rising from the ashes of the past and being reconstructed through dialogue.
“It is the only way that we can find solution to our problems,” she stated.
Belong here 
Teixeira said today Guyana is in a position in which it never was before, at the point of takeoff in terms of development. “We have moved from the doldrums and the poverty and the desperation in 1991 and 1992. We went through hard times; we went through violence; we went through tragedy. But Guyana today is where it never was before. In every single village, we are reconstructing our beautiful and blessed country because all of us belong here.”
She noted: “We have achieved so many successes that the world is watching us. When our party song says ‘Dem a watch we, Dem a watch we, [we are pointing out that the world is watching us, the political parties are watching us.”
About the many programmes that the government has initiated for the people, Teixeira said that more than 60 women from Buxton are benefitting from the ‘Women of Worth’ (WOW), which makes available micro loans for entrepreneurial purposes to single mothers, who, otherwise, would not be able to borrow through the regular banking system because of the requirements for collateral and other restrictions.