LGE will help to empower women politically

Mar 16, 2016 News

– Pres. Granger

“We will restore citizens’ constitutional rights to participate in the Government of their communities,” said President David Granger as he, in campaign mode, preached to a gathering of mostly women about the importance of supporting A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) at the Local Government Elections (LGE).
The President was at the time speaking at an International Women’s Day Forum at the Liliendaal Greater Georgetown Arthur Chung Convention Centre (ACCC).
LGE is slated for Friday, March 18, 2016, and according to the President, women must take advantage of this opportunity to help empower themselves.
President Granger emphasised that the significance of participating in LGE is far reaching.
“We will wake up from the nightmare of not having Local Government Elections for over two decades. A nightmare that has disempowered everyone, not only women, by having those horrible Interim Management Committees implanted in communities that should have elected Councils, but women must take the opportunity of our re-entry into the well of local democracy to be empowered politically so that they can participate fully in running their Councils and communities.”
The Head of State made it clear that one cannot speak truthfully about gender equality without ensuring that regular elections at local, regional and national levels provide women with the opportunity to elect persons who can advance their rights.
Women, according to him, must be empowered in order to reinforce their roles in political decision-making, even as they are empowered to have a say in communities and institutions of State.

President David Granger

“Women’s rights, women’s equality, women’s empowerment will continue to occupy a central place in my Government’s developmental agenda. Guyana will fulfil by 2030 its obligations fully under the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly number five. We can and we must and we will achieve greater equality and empower all women and girls,” President Granger asserted.
He continued, “We believe that the barriers to gender inequality – those barriers that are associated with geography, with occupation, with political affiliation, with racial differences – can be broken down in even less than 14 years.”
The President also stressed his belief that, “We need to close the gap in economic inequality if we are to close the gaps in social equality,” even as he added that moves toward gender parity cannot be achieved in the absence of a more equal society. But, according to him, inequality is not merely a situation among genders, but rather, there are prevailing geographic as well as social inequalities.
And there is need to pay keen attention to this, the President noted, in order to ensure that “people all over Guyana have access to education and to the benefits of society.”
And his Government, he noted, is on a mission to make sure that the widest disparity that exists is removed between the haves and the have nots.
“The poor don’t have the option of which school to send their children to. There are too great disparities between coastland and hinterland and urban and rural areas…The greater the challenges are, the greater the distances for children to cover to get to school, and that is where some of our problems exist in these unequal circumstances…These problems tend to exacerbate the problem of inequality,” the President declared.
He moreover informed that APNU+AFC is committed to a better educated society and creating opportunities for full employment. In fact he insisted that “We are committed to constructing a more equal society. We are committed to ensuring a fully empowered electorate.”