Here is a working class government for you

Apr 03, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

If the PPP is an organization that is in the making of policies is dedicated to elevating the poorer classes and has done just that while in power, then the meaning of a working class government is total nonsense and no genius can define what it means or measure its performance.
If the PPP Government in Guyana is on the side of the laboring masses and the economically poorer sections of Guyana, then I proclaim most emphatically, that Wall Street and the bankers of the US are working class heroes.
The PPP Government achieved power in 1992 and in 2014 will abolish property tax which starts from $7M. It means that for twenty-one years, this government that shouts out how much it cares for the poorer classes has been taxing citizens who have seven million dollars in assets. How can any politician be so ignorant, asinine, uncaring and bestial to ask its citizens who have $7M in assets, to pay property tax?
If you work as an employee in any low level job for twenty-five years and saved your money to buy a home, one would assume that after so many years of toiling that you have seven million dollars in assets.
It is no secret that maybe a panel door in one of the houses in Pardeeville 2 costs more than seven million dollars. After twenty-one years in power, this dastardly cruelty will be abolished. For twenty-one years, this so-called working people’s government could not see how cruel this policy was.
Here are more examples of the heartlessness of the PPP Government. It torments your mind as to why the people of this country voted this group into power five consecutive times.
Do you know that President Cheddi Jagan abolished duty free cars for UG lecturers when he came to power in 1992? Do you know that only senior doctors in the public medical sector can get duty free vehicles? For the police force it is only superintendents. Yet mining equipment and manufacturing machines for the capitalist class are assigned duty free status.
Let’s stick with cars. Before we do that, let’s repeat the nonsense that came out of the mouth of Finance Minister Ashni Singh during the 2012 budget debate. Singh, in reacting to the call for VAT reduction told the National Assembly that there is a basket of goods that poor people buy which is zero rated.
If, according to Singh, you lower VAT on all other items, it will not help the marginal classes because they do not buy such goods. If anything stupid ever came out of the mouth of Finance Minister in the history of this country, this is an example.
Police of lower ranks, soldiers of lower ranks, vendors, teachers, lower rank public servants, hire cars drivers and other low earning citizens are not middle class people. If they are going to buy a car, they will not choose an expensive one. They normally go for a price of $1.9 million.
The middle class, the upper classes and the wealthily groups do not drive cars that cost two million dollars. A typical $ 1.8M Toyota vehicle is the Raum or AT 212. It is on these models the government can lower the one-million-dollar duty, making a vehicle accessible to working class citizens. Go on any road in Georgetown and look at the types of citizens driving a Raum.
Do you know that this PPP Government when it brought in VAT put the 16 percent on the most basic foodstuff that the poorer classes depend on? All the basic necessities originally carried VAT including sugar, oil, bread, rice, eggs, toothpaste, milk, biscuits. It was widespread protests that caused a re-think.
What goes through the mind of a ruling politician that can put VAT rate at 16 percent on foodstuff that are essential for the labouring masses. And the so-called great freedom fighter of the poorer classes was alive then and was in control of the PPP – Janet Jagan.
Do you know the great Cheddi Jagan who called the longest sugar strike on the estates over the imposition of the Sugar Levy in 1976 came to power in 1992 and died in office without abolishing it? It was done away with eleven years after 1992.
Do you know that when the Berbice campus of UG was established and the Turkeyen lecturers were asked to teach, they were told to line up for bus transportation and the meal allowance was five hundred dollars?
This very government is seeking re-election and will showcase its “working class” nature.

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