…Bandhu accuses the party of stealing his candidates

LEADER of the United Republic Party (URP), Dr. Vishnu Bandhu believes that many Guyanese are not politically educated and therefore continue to fall into the traps of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP).

On the Guyana Chronicle’s online programme, Vantage Point on Monday, the URP Head said much of his bad experiences came from the former Administration he once supported. Unlike other small parties contesting the elections, the URP has been around for quite some time, founded in 1985 and launched in Guyana in 1987. In 1992 and 2015 the URP contested the General and Regional Elections but, according to Dr. Bandhu, the party only received 1,800 and 1,100 votes respectively. Questioned why the party took a break from contesting between 1992 and 2015, the party leader stated that it was because it (the party) “trusted the PPP would do the right thing”.

He said that that meant addressing law and order, positively, in Guyana and respecting the constitution. There was also the view that Dr Cheddie Jagan was an “honest politician”.
“We thought that he (Dr Jagan) would do the right thing but his years in government, he didn’t even attempt to do those things that he promised he would do. In fact, after the elections, I personally went to him. I said ‘Doc, you said winner wouldn’t take all’. Do you know what his answer was to me? ‘Who do you think is PPP/Civic? PPP/Civic is PPP.’ It was only names they were playing with. Because of the wrong things that had been going on in Guyana under the 23 years of the PPP we thought it was unfair. So, the same party which we assisted to go in government, which was the PPP, we came back and are fighting against them,” he explained.

The URP is self-funded by Dr. Bandhu and he has vowed never to coalesce with the PPP/C despite the fact that Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo had contacted him about same. “The URP is not merging with no political party,” Bandhu told the newspaper earlier this month. “Other political parties have called and asked us to come together and we said no. PPP called me but I never went. Bharrat [Jagdeo] had called me personally, I never went. Badal’s party had called me…but we are going alone, we’re not merging with nobody.”

On Monday, he repeated the same stating that he believed that URP represents the only hope for Guyana with the true leadership to move the country forward. Dr. Bandhu said that he doesn’t believe that all the leaders of the country’s two main political parties are bad but said that they would need to dismantle themselves and join the URP if they really wanted some form of a joint effort.

Detailing areas in which he believed the PPP demonstrated mismanagement and poor leadership, the URP Head criticized the notorious $10,000 cash grant to school children which he admitted had been misused for years by parents and guardians for unintended purposes.

“I know people who never even looked at their children. They picked up five of their children, they carried them at the school and they say ‘these are five children’ and they never spent any money on their kids but they collected $50,000,” he said.

It is the same cash grant that presidential candidate of the PPP, Irfaan Ali, has been promoting to resuscitate during the party’s on-going elections campaign. Dr. Bandhu said that people in pro-PPP areas continue to be misled to the extent that they believe every utterance of their leaders without thinking for themselves. He detailed: “You will find some Indian areas where there is PPP support [and] the government built their roads now and you will hear the PPP go around and say ‘we de put in fuh build that road’. Five years ago you were in there and you couldn’t have built the road but the government built the road, what is fair is fair…you‘ve got to think for yourself. We have a budget every year; this year’s budget will be spent on next year’s projects. So, how will PPP who came out from office five years ago and five years ago they could have left money to build the road? Nonsense. It doesn’t work like that.”

The URP head also accused the PPP of attempting to steal its candidates by sizing up the URP’s lists posted for previous elections and randomly taking names and copying signatures. “In the Local Government [Elections] we had candidates who were leading our lists on the West Demerara where I’m from and he [this candidate] never signed for the PPP but when we submitted our lists they said his name was on the PPP [List]. So, he wrote them a letter, got it notarized and showed them and told them that he never, ever signed for the PPP and let them take his name immediately off that list,” Dr. Bandhu said. The URP is contesting the 2020 General and Regional Elections and hopes to gain several seats in the National Assembly despite the limited support received on previous attempts.