THE Opposition’s sudden fervor for the same people that they neglected while they were in office was called out by People’s Progressive Party (PPP) General Secretary, Bharrat Jagdeo during his Thursday press conference.
As elections draw near, the General Secretary said that the opposition will display how opportunistic it is in order to gain political mileage.

For instance, a poster by the APNU+AFC attempted to discredit the PPP’s safe city project by saying that they were the ones who introduced it.
However, Jagdeo proved that this is untrue, and when the PPP demitted office in 2015, it had left the National Broadband project.
“You can’t believe anything that APNU+AFC has been saying,” he said.

Along with its coalition partner at the time, the Alliance For Change (AFC) was leading the charge in the APNU+PNCR’s assault on the agriculture sector, Jagdeo pointed out.
Recently, the AFC Leader Nigel Hughes visited Black Bush Polder, a farming community in Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne), and interacted with rice farmers, raising questions about authenticity.
The government’s support to farmers, as pointed out by Jagdeo, is not self-serving, and the PPP has a track record of advocating for them, and standing by their side.

Jagdeo said: “When we were in opposition, we were there all the time. When they were in government, they never showed up. When we came into government, we showed up in the area.”
It is important to understand that Former President David Granger had even told rice farmers that the challenges they were facing were not a government problem but a private one.
Granger had said: “There are problems within the rice industry, which are not to be blamed on the government. It’s a private enterprise largely… Take a look at the internal dynamics of the industry, and you will discover that it is a miller-farmer problem; not a government-rice problem.”

Addressing how the PPP has always extended support to farmers in different aspects, Jagdeo pointed to the relief measures by the government when the major flood impacted farmers in 2021.
The General Secretary said: “They would not even have seen APNU+AFC, much less get compensated for flood. They received free fertiliser, seed paddy; we have worked to open up new markets abroad because we were concerned about the residents there.”

Further, the area saw the construction of hundreds of concrete roads, and the major route is currently being improved. Millions of dollars have also been spent to improve the irrigation and drainage systems, and build farm-to-market roads in the area.

Also, following weeks of negotiations among President Dr. Irfaan Ali, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Guyana Rice Development Board (GRDB) and local rice millers, an official agreement was inked on Tuesday that will see rice farmers receiving no less than $4,000 for a bag of paddy for the first crop of 2025.

The AFC’s attempt to use those farmers for political gain was characterised as “shameless” by Jagdeo.
He even called out former AFC Leader Khemraj Ramjattan for trying to be the voice of the same sugar workers whose industry the coalition devastated from 2015-2020.
In 2017, the former APNU+AFC coalition government made the decision to shut down several sugar estates nationwide, resulting in thousands of workers losing their jobs and sources of income. This move led to the closure of four sugar estates, leaving over 7,000 sugar workers unemployed.

“You have to be extraordinarily shameless to show up with a straight face, talk to people in these communities about your care and concern and about development… one examination of their presentation in Parliament or when they go to a press conference would nullify; negate all of the lies that they tell on the ground,” the General Secretary said.