How to win or lose the 2020 national elections

Apr 13, 2017 Letters

Dear Editor,
History has a way of repeating itself and if not interrogated and exposed can cause the people to be conned more than once. I am observing a theme being peddled in the local press that “the government is being asked to do what the previous government did not do”. But isn’t that what the dollar a year PPP propagandists were doing in 1993? Making this exact statement? So why this repeat of history in 2017 only this time the PNC propagandist are being paid handsomely ”million dollar month” salaries with perks to write these comprehensively dotish letters?
Let me be absolutely clear, any government that frames its public policies exclusively on what the previous government did in the past will see limited SUCCESS and will swiftly lose elections. To win elections you have to constantly answer this question with positive results – What have I done for the people lately?
Harping about what the PNC did for 28 years and what the PPP did for 23 years is the position of the weak who only used it to fool a nation. But the Guyanese people are battle hardened. They have been fooled by the PNC and PPP for some 50 years, who do we think they will now listen to. PNC propagandist like Eric Phillips today who is only interested in preserving this FAT salary bequeathed to them by President Granger.
Today, we have a battle-hardened electorate who are more concerned with the answer to that question – you have collected my tax money, so what have you done for me lately in return? If the answer is that the government Ministers have set aside some G$1 billion for executive travel, lodging, and meals, but have nothing for the poor people, then that is a wrong answer. It should be more along the line, we have spent G$1 billion in developing a program to transform single unemployed mothers from house mothers to part-time entrepreneurs. Answers, like we have provided 2,000 new jobs for the youths in this field and that field, is more of what the people are looking for.
So the political winner of the 2020 elections shall be the one who can prove with evidence what they have done for the people at the bottom of the economic ladder? The PNC does have an advantage – they got 3 years to do something tangibly for the people at the bottom of the economic ladder. So rather than paying political propagandist, use that same money to employ program managers who can conceive and deliver on human development programs that will transform lives and make a difference. The era of bogus messaging from bogus minds is over.
What the PNC led Granger government does over the next 3 years can result in the PNC being out of power for the next 20 years, because from what I am observing, Bharrat Jagdeo is preparing himself to lead the nation out of this dismal era and to deliver for the people promptly after the 2020 elections.
I have heard him saying he will roll back all the VAT imposition on education, health, electricity, and water. I heard him saying he will put back in place the “Because we Care Grant” of G$10,000 to mothers with children in school. I heard him saying he shall re-employ the 1,500 Amerindian leaders to continue to drive the human development process in the hinterlands. I heard him say he will complete an Oil refinery, a sugar refinery, an ethanol plant, a deep water harbor, a road to Lethem and the Amaila Falls Hydro by 2025 once he comes into power in 2020.
From his record, once he runs a lean and clean government, Bharrat Jagdeo can do it. If he gets rid of all the dead weights like Ramotar and Rohee, I believe he can do it. I believe him because if we look at his track record, he wasn’t that bad.
Ryan Basdeo

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