More on the theme of the impossibility of the PPP’s re-election

Nov 25, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Yesterday’s viewpoint was that it would be impossible for the PPP to win re-election because of the pathology of corruption in which it is drowning. Why would the electorate vote for kleptocrats that stole billions when in power? The pertinent question that wasn’t asked in yesterday’s piece is; why would any population put back in power a group of politicians that did not perform for 19 years?
This is a separate issue from corruption. I am talking about the fascist use of power. Do people vote back an unrelenting dictatorship?
Let us leave the discussion of corruption. What has been the balance sheet of the PPP since 1992? Start with infrastructure. Can any East Indian that is afraid of the return of the PNC be satisfied with the PPP’s balance sheet in this area?
Enter the role of class structure. The PPP’s votes do not come exclusively from the upper classes. Not even the six seats of the AFC (five plus the acknowledged sixth by GECOM which can only be reversed by the courts or Parliament) came mainly from the middle stratum.
Guyana does not have a strong middle class demography to catapult any of the political parties into power even if one of them got all the ballots from the middle and upper echelons in society.
It takes about five thousand ballots to get a seat in Parliament. From a commonsensical angle, every political party has to embrace the interests of the lower and upper working class stratum. The PPP, for all its historical rhetoric about being a party of the masses, has spent the past eighteen years pandering to the wealthy classes. Not one area of taxation benefits the poorer classes.
The same with law. East Indian people are the main litigants in disputes involving land and business. That is commonsense; they are the people that own the land and dominate business. The party of the Indians has been in power for eighteen years. Let the Indian voters tell this nation how the PPP has restructured the judiciary and the rule of law to benefit the poor. Let the Indian litigants tell us how many years it takes to bring a case to its conclusion.
Education is no different. Nothing will be done for urban infrastructure because the other half live there. But rural schools are in the same dilapidated state as their Georgetown counterparts. Why would Indians vote for the PPP in 2011?
My daughter went to two of the best private schools -Marian Academy and School of the Nations – and I can say without fear of contradiction both schools are predominantly filled with Indian students. Where are the vision, service and generosity of the PPP to this nation?
Here now is an argument that you will get from the PPP sycophants. They say that schools and hospitals were never built by PNC when it was in power.
The billions of dollars from the World Bank, IDB, CDB, Canada, UK and the USA that the PPP Government is getting never came to the PNC. The poor engineers in those days had to work 100 hours a day trying to keep lights and water supply and sewage disposal in functioning order.
After 18 years of PPP rule, none of these services is stable and that is to put it mildly. In front of the President’s home, the New Market Street sewage system keeps collapsing. It has to be the sweetest irony in the history of politics. What can Indians point to in the PPP’s performance in the area of infrastructural development that could galvanize them to vote for these people again?
Mr. Jagdeo rides out in six month’s time and will leave Berbicians with the horrible presence of daily blackouts.
Where is Arnold Rampersaud? Why aren’t the PNC, AFC, WPA, GHRA, politicians like Mark Benschop not trying to reach him in Canada for him to talk about how he feels about the utterly ugly and despicably looking cheap Berbice Bridge and the horrible tolls that Berbicians have to pay for using it?
Rampersaud was one of those PPP members who participated in a daily picket against the toll when the Corentyne highway was constructed by the Burnham Government in the seventies. Violence was the result; a policeman was gunned down by PPP supporters, and Rampersaud was charged for murder. He was saved from the gallows by Walter Rodney. Rampersaud was treated nicely. The Canadians gave him asylum. He should speak out. Last week Sunday in this newspaper, a Guyanese-American asked who was the idiot (his word) that built that ugly bridge. We all know the answer.

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