THE horrendous pilferage of the treasury and other State funds by the coalition APNU+AFC government is being revealed moment by moment, sector by sector, ministry by ministry, and it is apparent that “The good life” the coalition parties promised the electorate pre-2011 and pre-2015 elections did fructify – for their Cabinet members, family members, cronies, financiers, et al.

The APNU+AFC coalition government obviously (mal)administered Guyana with no defined economic plan or social development programme based on coherent studies of the dynamics that would eventuate into their promised “good life for all”..
What is emerging is that the Guyanese working-class people were thrown meagre crumbs from the coalition government’s buffet table, while the ‘fat cats’ gobbled up the bulk of the economic feast.

According to Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, speaking at one of his weekly press conferences, “… the (coalition) government has been sponging off the billions” left in the National Treasury by the former Administration, as well as the achievements of the PPP/C, in almost every area of social and economic life.
During a press conference at the People’s Progressive Party’s Freedom House Headquarters, then General-Secretary, Clement Rohee, declared that, from the inception, the APNU+AFC coalition administration has been “knocking from pillar to post” in an aimless attempt to find an appropriate development model to build on what the PPP/C left behind.

Rohee continued, “In the meanwhile, the persistent corruption scandals rocking the Granger Administration has resulted in growing disillusionment and dissatisfaction on the part of its own supporters, in particular, and the Guyanese people in general. In contrast, the socio-economic model based on the programmes and policies of the PPP/C served to sustain persistent growth rates, resulting in consistent improvement in the lives of the Guyanese working people in general but, more particularly, for single parents, pensioners, young Amerindians and workers in general.”.

From the inception of its governance, the APNU+AFC government embarked on a nation-wide witch-hunt of those whom they perceived were PPP/C leaders and supporters, even technocrats who served under the PPP/C administration.

One of their first acts after assuming office was to fire 2000 young people from Amerindian communities, while simultaneously awarding to themselves hefty salary increases. Their racial and political discrimination, their blatant corrupt actions, their victimization and witch-hunting of former government officials and PPP/C supporters amounted to economic genocide and assumed proportions of a gargantuan persecution pogrom.

Post-election gerrymandering and posturing, with the clear intention of rigging the elections, even as the nation was assailed by a deadly pandemic that left the Guyanese people from every community vulnerable to the point of starvation, created a vacuum in the existential dynamics of most working-class Guyanese that should have been filled by any caring government. Instead, they were appropriating hundreds of millions– actually billions of dollars of state funds– to pay for an unnecessary vote re-count and innumerate, vexatious and irrelevant court cases, as well as to encourage their supporters to engage in mass protests in the midst of a lockdown and curfew.

But, in or out of government, the PPP was/is historically a people-caring party, and President-elect, Dr. Irfaan Ali, stepped up to the plate. He dispersed teams countrywide to share masks to protect people from infection from the Covid-19 virus and share food packages to save the poor people from starvation.
His Excellency, President Irfaan Ali has already demonstrated that he will not merely promise, but he will deliver to all Guyanese “the good life,” where every man, woman and child will reap the harvest of Guyana’s bounties.