All sectors of Guyana’s productive workforce could join in the government’s evident satisfaction with the endorsement given last week by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to the continuing economic growth being experienced as a consequence of enlightened fiscal policies, and general management of the economy. With the 4.8 per cent economic growth expected by the IMF for 2013, it means that Guyana is well placed to maintain its impressive record of successive annual economic growth of between three and five per cent.
Not only does this achievement compare most favourably among member states of CARICOM, but increasing productivity and good economic management have  combined to also enable the government to maintain faith in public sector workers by continuing to guarantee its minimum five per cent wage hike, and even a one-month tax-free bonus, as provided last week to the Guyana Defence Force.
Regretably, the parliamentary opposition alliance of APNU and AFC continue to behave as if they are out of touch with the prevailing social, economic and political realities in Guyana. Consequently, they seem to prefer, instead, to waste much time and energy in the politics of slander, disinformation and even slander.
This is  the sort of negative politicking that would have contributed to the embarrassment suffered by the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) on Friday, when it miserably failed to mount what had been planned as a massive protest to back demands for more  than the government’s repeat annual five per cent pay hike.
Perhaps the APNU and AFC’s so-called “strategists” who had contributed to misleading the GPSU about the level of political solidarity to expect for Friday’s planned protest march should now engage in a critical assessment of their own as to why their propaganda and assumed popular support so miserably failed.
The pity is that, warts and all, the  GPSU still has a better leadership record  among what remains as affiliates of a once united Guyana Trades Union Congress.
Today, the leadership of the GTUC, as offered with its current General Secretary in particular, has become so bitterly opposed to the government that it is simply multiplying examples of  political bitterness and social prejudices that  can hardly inspire the quality of critical thinking and capacity for popular mobilisation needed for workers unity and national economic progress.
For now, we await the comments and analyses to come from the GTUC’s traditional media apologists, as well as the excuses the APNU and AFC leaders may wish to offer for the big failure of a planned protest march against the government’s repeat offer of a five per cent wage hike for public sector workers.
It is to be hoped that better judgment, of which it is quite capable, could yet result in the GPSU’s acceptance of the repeat five per cent pay hike for 2013, even if it follows fresh dialogue with the government.