THE search for a third party to create a minority PPP government is ongoing. I know Mr. Glen Lall has approached people in Berbice because one such person told me that.
The EU Embassy in Georgetown has been meeting with some folks who want funding. Some 2020 third parties may reappear in 2025.
I cannot see a minority PPP government in 2025 because I believe President Ali’s personality, style and politics are admired to the point where he will increase his parliamentary percentage. I think the PNC will lose seats to the PPP in 2025 making a minority government virtually impossible.
Who thinks a third party can successfully create a minority government? People who sit in high-priced café and resplendent restaurants and debate what the Guyanese people want and those people who do not shop at Bourda Green or stop at Juice Power on Middle Street to buy a sorrel drink.
This is the problem with anti-government critics from the diaspora. You ask Guyanese who or what is the Oil and Gas Governance Network, they don’t know and when you tell them it is a group of aging Guyanese long gone from Guyana, you get the traditional response – “why they don’t come back home.”
You identify to the Guyanese people the group that wants Guyana to stop oil production because it is harmful to the environment and you describe the financial status of these people, you get the traditional response – “middle class people whose bread is well buttered.”
The point is the descriptions about those groups turn people off and come election time it will be easy pickings for the PPP. Imagine someone as persuasive as Anil Nandlall addressing a large election meeting at a street corner and he describes the financial status of these middle class folks who want a third party, and he tells his listeners that these people want to stop income from oil. How you think they will react?
The General-Secretary of ANUG, Mr. Timothy Jonas wants ANUG to position itself to create a minority government. Mr. Jonas is a nice person that means well but Mr. Jonas’s journey into politics began in 2020 and it is too short a time for him to understand how Guyanese in general feel about politics. I don’t think he does.
Mr. Jonas has to understand that it is easy to make pronouncements on a talk show and write letters to the newspapers but when the campaign starts that is where you are tested. It is in the street arena where gloves are off that you win and lose votes. One negative revelation announced at a public meeting and social media picks it up, and that candidate is in trouble.
Mr. Jonas may not know this but he jeapordizes his party’s electoral prospects through his association with the Stabroek News (SN). Mr. Jonas is on the board of directors of SN and he is yet to name the other members of the board.
All Mr. Nandlall, in his own inimitable style, has to do is read selected parts of many SN editorials to the gathering that are racist and downright culturally insulting to the people of this country and Mr. Jonas gets into trouble immediately.
Twice Mr. Jonas has referred to the Chronicle as a rag but refuses to see his own paper of having the same sin that he accuses other newspapers of having. A newspaper that is supposed to be independent referred to this columnist as a “PPP lapdog.” The same newspaper refused to carry the letters of presidential adviser, Professor Randolph Persaud, because it says he criticises civil society groups.
When these irregularities are broadcasted on the campaign trail, does Mr. Jonas think ANUG will not be devastated, and that voters will just ignore these shortcomings of Mr. Jonas. It is easy to think that you are wining hearts and minds when you accuse the government of using the Natural Resource Fund for use of big spending.
But it is a different ball game when the PPP’s sharp-shooters take to the campaign trail and show the Guyanese people how the money was spent that benefitted the nation. You read the online comments at the bottom of the letters of the Stabroek News and those bigoted, racist people feel they are scoring points against the government.
But the society learns when PPP leaders take to the campaign trail and point out that all, not most, but all of those comments are from anonymous people who do not have even an ounce of integrity to identify themselves and are just lost souls looking for psychological survival. Even if the most dynamic third party emerges in 2025, it will be consigned to the dustbin because their skeletons in the closet will run into millions.
