No Guyanese voter can be so stupid not to see that 35 is 0.7 percent of 5000

Mar 27, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There are technical things about politics that the average layperson needs to have explained to them. There are others that are so graphically commonsensical that it is humiliating for you to want someone to draw a picture for you.
For hundreds of thousands of East Indians, the PNC was the bad guy in Guyanese politics that discriminated against East Indians. The Indians saw Cheddi Jagan and the PPP as their savior.
The era of PNC in government is long, long gone. The people who have given the PPP four consecutive victories cannot be so stupid, so blind not to see what those four wins have brought to this country.
Let us outline one of the technical points of politics for the ordinary East Indian voter who normally chooses the PPP during election time.
All over this country where Indians can be found, the sermon is preached by PPP mandarins that under the PNC Government, social collapse occurred.
What Indians need to understand is that social collapse has taken place the last few years under the PPP and the situation is worse than when the PNC was in control. Why? Because the PNC had not even a cent to administer Guyana.
The PPP has hundreds of billions of dollars, yet the breakdown is there to see. And how do I know this? I lived under the PNC. I am living under the PPP.
Physical and social infrastructure fell to the ground under President Burnham. The same has happened under Mr. Jagdeo.
Where are those hundreds of billions of dollars? For every conceivable project without exception, money comes to the Guyana Government from the international lending agencies. Be it electricity, water supply, road-building, schools, hospitals, traffic signals, agricultural development, sewage facilities, sea defence, repair of police stations, you name it – American dollars by the billions pour in.
The Indian Government funded the National Stadium and the traffic lights. The Japanese Government built the Caricom Secretariat. The Chinese Government gave us the Convention Centre.
Do you know that air-conditioning units, fax machines, computers, furniture and vehicles for many ministries come from ongoing IDB grants? No important machine in the Georgetown Public Hospital is ever bought with local financing. This government begs for money all the time to the extent that the Jamaican PM, Mr. Golding, called Guyana under Mr. Jagdeo a pan-handler.
Where is the functional life of these structures? For East Indians who don’t see the breakdown because they live outside of Georgetown, come here and see the daily madness at the junction of Lamaha and Albert Streets. The traffic signals there have never worked properly since they went on years ago.
Traffic lights have never functioned for three consecutive days and nights since their installation in 2007. Last year, only three of 28 sewage stations were in operation. I saw with my own two eyes in Wortmanville that when the upstairs tenant flushed the toilet, it ran out of the bowl into the downstairs home. That did not occur under the PNC regime. We just have to accept daily blackouts. GWI doesn’t read the meters. It bills you randomly.
Enter commonsensical politics. Were the listeners to President Jagdeo in Berbice two weeks ago so foolish that they couldn’t see that their party is not interested in the freedoms that so many other countries enjoy?
Couldn’t there have been someone in the audience to ask Prsident Jagdeo the question – “Sir, if the PPP is so democratic, why are these great leaders so afraid to have the PPP members elect the PPP’s presidential candidate for the 2011 elections?” Messrs. Jagdeo and Ramotar would not have been able to answer.
These very “great” leaders who spoke at Babu John will choose their presidential contestant in a closed room by secret ballot with 35 persons voting. To add to the nightmare, these leaders have introduced postal voting for this event, something the PPP fought against when the PNC was in power.
Postal voting was a word that brought fear to the PPP in the seventies. The PPP kings tell their supporters that they are the best and strongest party in Guyana, with a membership of 5000. Yet not even one percent of that membership will decide who will represent the PPP as its presidential candidate. Only 35 out of that 5000 – 0.7 percent – will have that right.
I wrote recently that Berbicians have to be stupid not to see the PPP leaders for what they are.
Let me repeat – a person has to be stupid not to see failure of the PPP the past 19 years.

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