By Earl Bousquet

SOMETIMES, in the name of transparency and letting ideas contend, we hasten to share what’s shared with us that simply sounds good or looks bad.
But Caribbean Netizens must also be careful about what we would normally swallow about Guyana — especially with elections just days away, where a billionaire sanctioned by the US is seen as trying to invest his way into the presidency; and opposing forces, separately and together, going to most-extreme lengths to influence voters through disinformation.

Choreographed, unsubstantiated and unverified claims of gubernatorial corruption are made and quickly retracted, while distractions dominate the political discussion ahead of the first presidential elections since the nation became, under this administration’s stewardship, the fastest-growing Caribbean economy and the world’s fastest-growing oil-producing economy.
Under this administration, it’s shown a capacity to overcome the early claims it would succumb to the so-called ‘Dutch Disease’ that insultingly claims developing and poor nations can’t manage new natural and energy resources.

The online feeds of many popular ‘influencers’ can be coarse and violent, boldly partisan and use of language that would be barred if ever there was responsible online censorship to ensure at least respect for established global norms of decency.

Take, for example, the long historical roles of the ‘Peeping Tom’ column in Guyana’s widely-read Kaieteur News newspaper, media and politics, from as far back as when the PPP/C returned to office in 1992 after 28 years of dictatorship and electoral malfeasance.
If only some of us knew just a little of the much we don’t know about politics and elections in Guyana – and the PPP’s ability to always survive the odds, including when stacked illegally or politically charged against it.

We can choose our own yardsticks to measure the PPP/C, but its record since 2020 has seen more opposition supporters and officials join and vote for it in local government elections, and its performance is so that the opposition seems only able to promise to ‘better’ everything promised in the ruling alliance’s ‘Agenda 2030’ manifesto, as it seeks a second term.

I am not one to believe the painted picture that Guyanese have been in such wilderness since the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) found in 2020 that the Guyana government had been hijacked by the then ruling APNU+AFC coalition that had lost the March 2 elections, but held on until August 2 (a full five months) in 2020 that they were simply anxiously awaiting a blue angel to appear over their skies bearing nuggets of gold, promising to do everything better and outspend any government in the world’s fastest-growing oil economy.

This simplistic assessment of Guyanese voters is nothing but insulting, as it rules out any possibility that they can measure their progress (or lack thereof) by themselves.
I think the blue wave will eventually wash ashore on September 1, not just because of how much this administration has done, thus-far, with the 14 percent earnings the main opposition party signed up to with Big Oil, already ensuring every household starts seeing, feeling and sharing the nation’s new wealth.

Opposition jealousy is normal and natural in any situation where a ruling party has made the best of a bad situation, and is well-poised to do even more, even better.
Opportunists are lining up in and behind the billionaire candidate, most more to wad their wallets than because they feel the blue wave can become a tsunami.
The man being painted as a major contender has already said he won’t accept the results of Monday’s presidential and parliamentary poll – and so has the main opposition alliance, the PNC-led APNU.

So, there…
It’s also not at all fair to play the legacy of Dr Cheddi Jagan against his party by engaging in retroactive measurement of what he would have done, vis-a-vis what his party is doing almost three decades after his death.
It’s like the way we’re now asking robots to analyse what Caribbean leaders would have thought or done today in very changed circumstances.
We must stop riding bicycles uphill without brakes, sitting on fences and walking in the middle of the road, simply because we want to ‘play safe’ forever, or we’re afraid to take sides and be proven wrong.
Middle-of-the-roaders will get hit from any direction, so we must continue to stand by the convictions that built us and avoid innocently or carelessly joining online speculators with irons in Guyana’s fires.
We must also learn to bend accordingly, when Time and History demand.

I have long believed the PPP/C is better for Guyana and I still hold that most Guyanese are not dumb voters waiting to be swayed just days ahead of an election.
Instead, I think the silent majority have made their minds up and will vote for continuity on Monday.

There will be the normal challenges to the results, as already signalled, with high-heeled opposition lawyers only standing by to expectedly and hopefully bleed blue dollars out of gold.
But then, in the name of ‘democracy,’ I also hear and read comments by red and pink comrades supporting the possibility that Guyanese will vote into office a President who won’t be able to fly to New York to address the UN General Assembly in October, because he’s deemed a fugitive of US Justice.

It’s also simply ridiculous to suggest that Guyanese voters will, on Monday, decide to vote for any party on the clearly divided opposition, even in the face of the clear differences they have seen since August 2000.

All elections are impossible to predict until the final vote is fairly counted, so the battle for minds continues across Guyana.

That stated, I also have more respect for Guyanese, because, after all they’ve gone through before and since independence in 1966, including 28 years of dictatorship and five months of a losing party holding on to office illegally, violent elimination of political opponents and successive decades ranked as ‘the second poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere,’ they surely deserve it!

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.