VICE-PRESIDENT Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo has described the opposition APNU+AFC approach to politics as one that is characterised by a philosophy of ‘fear of the other’.
This approach to politics is at best counterproductive and has been the root cause of much ethnic tensions in our society especially during the early 1960’s when reactionary groups led by the PNC attempted to subvert the PPP regime.

It was a tense period in our history which has left a deep scar on our national psyche.
We have come a long way since those sordid years when attempts were made to divide our society along ethnic lines. At the core of those disturbances was the projection of a false and misleading narrative of Black ‘marginalisation’.

Unfortunately, there are still elements in our society who continue to peddle such lies, all in an attempt to score cheap political lines. As pointed out by Vice-President Jagdeo who is also the General Secretary of the PPP, the PNC pushed an element of fear; fear of the PPP, fear that it will discriminate against Afro-Guyanese.

“And so it kept a large number of people away from us. The campaign of fear based on race served its purpose for them and so they are unwilling to relinquish this tool because it worked for them in the past,” Dr. Jagdeo noted.

Thankfully, Guyanese are today less receptive to such a narrative. After twenty-eight years of undemocratic rule which left in its wake a broken economy and widespread poverty, the PNC now stands exposed. Guyanese are today in a much better position to compare life under the PNC regime with that of the PPP/C administration. For the vast majority of them, it is analogous of comparing chalk with cheese. The stigma of a ‘pariah’ state has been erased and Guyana is now ranked high among the fold of democratic nations.

Yet, as observed by Dr. Jagdeo, the so-called ‘victim mentality’ is still being peddled by the PNC which is trying to project a narrative of being ‘robbed’ of political power in the March 2020 General and Regional elections.

The fact is that it was the PNC that rigged all national and regional elections ever since it was catapulted into power in the 1964 elections through a process of constitutional engineering. All elections since then were massively and blatantly rigged by the PNC regime which perpetuated its political life through force and fraught for nearly three decades.

There is, as noted by Vice-President Jagdeo, a core difference between the PPP and the PNC. The PPP, in sharp contrast to the PNC, has transformed the economic and social landscape of the country in positive ways. The PNC, on the other hand, had over its twenty-eight years of dictatorial rule, left a trail of destruction and underdevelopment, the likes of which has never been experienced in the Anglophone Caribbean.

Guyana is moving forward under the PPP/C administration. The development ‘tsunami’ has lifted, as it were, all boats and there is shared prosperity across the political and ethnic spectrum. This reality cannot be downplayed or wished away, the antics of the PNC notwithstanding.