ALTHOUGH the People’s National Congress Reform (PNC/R) has carried the trademark stamp of being riggers, its recent congress has indeed shown that the party is “untrustworthy,” People’s Progressive Party (PPP) General Secretary, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo HAS said.

During a press conference at the party’s headquarters on Thursday, the PPP General Secretary highlighted the ‘jack-in-the-box’ tallying by the PNC/R, which has yet to announce the official results of its central committee members.

Dr Jagdeo while explaining the history of the party, which has been slowly disintegrating on the national stage, said that the PNC/R had the opportunity at its congress to “reinvent” itself, but they failed to do so.

In this regard, it should be noted that the PNC/R Leader Aubrey Norton during the opening ceremony of the party’s 22nd biennial congress, last Friday, regurgitated most of the strategies that it outlines at its weekly press conferences and made the current government the highlight of the long overdue event.

Although the PNC/R’s plans have constantly been flagged by prominent economists and policy advisors because of its unfeasibility, the Party Leader still fed his party members the repetitive ideas, just with a firmer tone.

Further, the PPP General Secretary, who also serves as Guyana’s Vice President, said: “It [PNC/R] is a party that has no track record of achievement and we’ve demonstrated that. After 28 years in government, we went from the Singapore of the Caribbean in 1960s to the second poorest country in the western hemisphere, rivalling Haiti.”

He also recalled that Guyanese people were leaving the nation in droves under the PNC/R’S reign, owing to the state of economy.

And while the PNC/R in unison with the Alliance For Change (AFC) managed to attain power in 2015, the PPP General Secretary said that it mirrored the PNC/R’s previous reign.
As he outlined how the former coalition government rode on the backs of Guyanese, Dr Jagdeo said: “We lost jobs in large numbers. We spent quite a bit of money in that period because the taxes went up significantly.

“We collected over $100 billion more in taxes, nearly double our tax stake. We started losing welfare, children’s grant; [they] took away the subsidy from pensioners, took away the Joint Services bonus, stop building farm-to-market roads, put taxes on all the productive sectors.

“We were heading back right to where they were in that past.”

Further, the PPP General Secretary stated that with or without oil resources, if the Opposition still had its grips on governance, Guyana would have been riddled with debt, as it was under the PNC/R in the 90s.

PNC/R MISSED THE BUS

While the opportunity presented itself boldly in front of the PNC/R’s eyes, the party missed the bus and is continuing to carry the stigma of being “riggers” to the Guyanese people, Dr Jagdeo outlined.

Despite the General and Regional Elections scheduled to be held next year, the PPP General Secretary said that he thought the PNC/R would have used its internal elections to show Guyanese that it is “trustworthy.”

This was far from reality, he explained.

“So, the congress failed to give the people any assurance that they had a clear economic plan for this country,” Dr Jagdeo said, adding: “Their actions and the confusion surrounding the congress just doesn’t make them look more untrustworthy but even their own people, the contending parties have declared that the entire process of the congress was an untrustworthy one, was a rigged one, was designed to achieve a particular outcome.”

Notably, as Dr Jagdeo correctly pointed out that it was persons at the helm of the PNC/R who made the treacherous allegations of irregularities as it related to the party’s congress such as Dawn Hastings-Williams, who resigned as the party’s General Secretary.

“If you can’t be trustworthy to your top leadership and have them defend you. How could you come over as being trustworthy to the people of this country?” Dr Jagdeo rhetorically asked while emphasising that the PNCR failed “miserably” on the metric of trustworthiness.

He later stated: “The PNC has this old stigma of stealing elections. Historically, they’re known for doing this, a stigma they can’t shake.”

Dr Jagdeo also asked how that party can govern the nation if its own internal elections erupted in mass chaos.

From the inception, the PNC/R’s own members objected to the congress as there were numerous allegations of irregularities that placed a dark cloud over the party.

And even as time progressed and the party geared up for its opening ceremony on June 28, those who challenged the leadership “suspended” their campaigns because of the lack of transparency, among other allegations of infractions.

What was even more shocking is that despite painting the PNC/R as a political party with an increasing membership, the party was caught red-handed as the number of delegates constantly changed.

In a statement issued on Monday, the party said that its three-day 22nd biennial delegates congress which ended on Sunday, was attended by approximately 1,300 delegates. However, the party had previously said that some 2,000 delegates were expected to be in attendance.

According to the party, Norton was returned unopposed as Party Leader; Shurwayne Holder was re-elected as Chairman; Vinceroy Jordan and Elizabeth Williams-Niles were re-elected as Vice Chairpersons, and Elson Low was elected Treasurer of the party.
However, the drawn-out tallying of the votes for the central executive committee has placed the PNC/R under immense scrutiny as many have even stated that the party is mirroring its antics from the 2020 General and Regional Elections.

Despite claiming to be a democratic political force, the party has reasoned that its voting count exceeded more than 72 hours on several grounds, such as the holiday on Monday.

In a statement on Thursday, the Returning Officer, Vincent Alexander, said: “The count for the central executive committee members required the examination of approximately thirteen hundred ballots, each bearing fifty-nine candidates, in order to determine which fifteen of those fifty-nine candidates obtained the highest number of votes across those ballots.”