I HAVE noticed with interest the political tug o’ war in this little country of mine. It seems that all the days of my life it has been so between the PNC and the PPP. The recent advent of a new political party which originally comprised  the two first political parties in Guyana seemed like a God send for some Guyanese. However, during the last election campaign, it was clearly seen that the Alliance For Change is now made up of persons kicked out of the PPP. The major former PNC player had apparently seen the light and seems to have moved over to the side of the ruling party from what I observed from the public gallery during the last three weeks or so in the National Assembly.
The AFC has taken the power-broker image beyond the stages of reality and has now taken on the mantle of ruler of Guyana. “What we say you must do, you MUST do,” is the attitude towards the government of the day, an attitude they have also forced the APNU to adopt. How in tarnation can an opposition party ‘tell’ a head of state what to do? The man is ‘The President’ whatever you say. Whether you like him or not, he holds the post.
I heard the defence presented during last weekend’s Plain Talk with Christopher Ram. I also clearly heard Khemraj Ramjattan and Cathy Hughes clearly stating that “every single government has a right for funds for government information, the promotion of their projects” and that “APNU had wanted the entire thing to cut. We had wanted to leave some money for GINA”
It boggles the mind that a party that claims to have the national interest at heart would prevent the nation from having access to information about their government’s programmes and projects by denying them the funds to process that information.
From the behaviour and attitudes displayed by the members of that party and their APNU cohorts, one would tend to agree with the President that they are a bunch of bitter, vindictive, revenge-seeking persons bent on the destruction of the party that gave birth to their ambitions, regardless of who gets hurt in the process.
It is amazing that these two parties display the lack of interest that their actions which have hurt a number of Guyanese will come back to haunt them.
Think about it. Every Guyanese is one member of an extended family which can run into hundreds. You hurt one and 100 turn against you. The opposition needs to calculate how many have been hurt, multiply by 100 and realise how many votes have been lost.
The minimum of 40,000 votes will not only give back the PPP/C that lost seat and the extra one they need to control the Assembly, it may even draw more to give them a resounding majority.
And all because the opposition was stupid enough to attempt to destroy what every government in the world legally works with – an information arm, and start a war.