Dear Editor,
I write to your newspaper to highlight an issue concerning the PPP’s treatment of Linden and its goodly citizens that in my opinion is worthy to point out to the wider Guyana. As a result I am beseeching your facilitation to have the matter ventilated.
For over a year now Guyana has been thrown into a very highly politically charged atmosphere due to the events of December 21th 2018, events so infamous that I need not allocate any column space to recount it. What I would like to discuss however, are the PPP’s shameless and barefaced attempts to deceive the people of Linden with their campaign promises.

Traversing through parts of Linden you come into clear view of campaign banners plastered on the light posts with various promises of the PPP in a sorry attempt to woo voters of the mining town. I describe `the attempts as sorry because they are obvious, half-witted, lazy and downright insulting lies to any half rational Lindener of voting age.
Of the more than one dozen lazy-lies/promises let us take just three and discuss how much of a slap in the face they are.

1) Free Education within Five Years
Breach of constitution and constitutional crisis are words frequently out of the mouths of the top leadership of the PPP when describing the current government but it is a matter of history that the PPP breached the constitution in 1994. Under the guise of cost recovery, they (PPP) placed a cost to attend university. This cost was double edged for Lindeners especially because they (Lindeners) already bore the heavy cost of transportation to get to the University of Guyana. Free education from nursery to university is a constitutionally guaranteed right, a right enjoyed by all until a PPP government came to power and continued the practice under subsequent PPP governments lead by former president Bharrat Jagdeo and all those members of the PPP seeking office in the upcoming March 2nd general and regional elections. Thanks to the leadership and vision of Dr. Vince Adams (an executive member of AFC) who advocated at the party level for the restoration of free education paid for by oil wealth which was later embraced by HE president Granger who has a passion for an educated nation, Guyana under the continued stewardship of President Granger will have its constitutional right restored.

Fact is that the PPP breached the constitution and placed a cost on university education in 1994 and successive PPP governments including Bharrat Jagdeo and Irfaan Ali would have continued that unconstitutional policy but now in a bid to regain power is barefacedly lying to the people. We don’t believe you.

50,000 New Jobs
For 23 years successive PPP governments oversaw the decline of the bauxite industry and the negative spinoff effects that had on the economy of Linden that resulted in the loss of thousands of jobs. It is legend that one former president vowed to see the once booming town of Linden reduced nothing more than a graveyard and in many ways that was fulfilled. Linden became the graveyard for the hopes and dreams of its young people who dreamed of raising a family and being gainfully employed in the community of their birth as many had to leave their beloved hometown to find employment. Linden is a graveyard for countless marriages as husbands or wives left the matrimonial home to go the interior or foreign lands to provide for those they left behind where the union broke under the pressures encountered from the trials of an absentee spouse. Linden became the graveyard for countless businesses who fell as the economic conditions worsened in the twenty-three years of PPP government policies ignored them. Now as oil wealth comes to Guyana and they want to win an election 50,000 new jobs? We don’t believe you!

Cheaper Electricity
This is the most vexing and outright disrespectful of the PPP’s lies to the people of Linden. It is not just a slap in the face, it is the equivalent of someone ‘hawking up a greenie spitting it into the palm of their hand and then slapping you in the face with it.’ At that time in 2012 there were no justifications of why the then government chose to discontinue subsidies for electricity as they could have afforded it. It was merely out of spite due to the 2011 elections result as Lindeners resoundingly rejected the corrupt government by vote. This PPP lie is a desecration of the graves of the Linden martyrs, it is their callous disregard for the loss endured by mourning mothers for their sons. In 2012 it was the policy of the then PPP government to increase the cost for electricity some eleven times over the then rate. With all the pressures and difficulties that Linden faced it was the policy of PPP to add disrespect to insult and injury and attempt to saddle the economically weak town with an unbearable electric bill. This for me then told me all I needed to know about the PPP and their intention for Linden in that, “the PPP don’t like Linden” and wish to see us suffer. Now that Guyana is on the precipice of never before experienced wealth the PPP is coming with a lies we all know due to history has no chance of materializing? We don’t believe you!
For these elections the PPP hasn’t just lied to the people of Linden but the entire nation, including its supporters. There is not a PPP supporter or opposition that believes if by some misfortune Guyana’s reins of power is returned to the grasp of the PPP that Irfaan Ali would be its true president. He would be a ventriloquist president with Bharrat Jagdeo by his side, hand up his back controlling his movements, his lips moving but Jagdeo’s voice and the nation unentertained.

All Guyanese (including PPP supporters) should be vexed and insulted by these lazy lies as Lindeners are. These aren’t imaginative clever lies, they are half-baked, lacking effort and transparent. They are not sweet lies, the kinds you doubt but still want to believe they are the result of an entitled pompous attitude of someone who believes they have a transport over a party created for progress of people. On March 2nd all of Guyana will say in response to these lies “WE DON’T BELIEVE YOU!”

Regards
Kenny Valladares