Do the math, you idiot!

Mar 13, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

It is such a pity that the Alliance For Change, that was set to devastate and could have electorally wrecked the PPP, faded away so quickly. It is such a pity that Moses Nagamootoo’s legacy evaporated so rapidly (history is going to judge this failed mandarin harshly) because such realities have allowed the PPP to resuscitate and reenergize.
The PPP isn’t going to win in 2020 and long before 2020, many of its leaders should have been before the courts (only one so far, Jennifer Westford) but it has to be a social caricature of the worst kind to have such a party parading itself in front of the nation. Make no mistake, the crowds at the 2018 Babu Jaan death anniversary of Cheddi Jagan came from unemployed sugar workers.
Such was an unfortunate situation because they are indeed frustrated people. But that is the irony of the whole situation. Now they are disenchanted, they will vote for the PPP. When they were badly off they still voted for the PPP as they did in 2015. I once asked a group of Leguan farmers why they were picking on the new government for the poor economy of the island, because when it was poor before they still voted for the PPP. One of them shook his head and said; “yes, you are right.”
All Guyanese love sugar workers, from African Guyanese to elite Portuguese Guyanese business men; we all know their priceless contributions from which all Guyanese benefitted. I still can’t comprehend why it is that they do not understand the deep significance of the 2015 election results. Surely their educated children could explain it to them.
The Indian leadership of the AFC lost the 2015 general election in the hometown of the Prime Minister himself – Whim. Khemraj Ramjattan lost in 2015 in his own birth village. Sugar workers voted for the PPP in 2015 which lost Parliament by a single vote (in Region 7) and the central government by less than 5,000 votes.
Sugar is almost dead, it is not a profitable industry, why then do sugar workers expect that a political party (APNU+AFC) will pump dozens of billions into saving the industry, only to see sugar workers vote to bring back the PPP in power? No ruling party in the world will be so naïve. So the sugar workers flocked to Babu Jaan last Sunday to hear the unadulterated garbage that PPP leaders insulted them with. Here is the garbage.
First, they were told that the PPP will not allow the 2020 election to be rigged. But President Ramotar said on the day of the 2011 election results that it was rigged. Jagdeo and Ramotar refused to give up power in May 2015, emphatically declaring that the poll was fraudulent. So the crowds had to know that the PPP leaders were telling them amazing nonsense. The PPP was in power in 2011 and there was “fraud.” The PPP was in power in 2015 and there was “tampering.” How come in 2020 when the PPP will not be in power, it can stop rigging?
Secondly, what crass stupidity for any PPP leader to say it will win the 2020 election by a five-seat majority? That would give the PPP almost sixty percent of the vote, which they never had even under Cheddi and Janet Jagan.
The man who uttered this asininity did not do his math. If all Indian and Amerindian registrants ballot for the PPP, it will give them 50 percent. To get 58 percent, you need large amounts of ballots from the mixed race group and Africans. Even with the AFC out of contention, all Indians will not vote for the PPP. A third party is coming and its leaders are far more credible than many of the current crop of PPP leaders.
Those young, decent Indians I saw at the anti-parking meter protest are not going with the PPP in 2020. It is stupid to say all Amerindians will vote for the PPP. You have to be blind to live in Guyana and not see the special attention that David Granger is paying to the Amerindians. And please don’t tell me just five years after losing power, Africans will forget what the PPP did to them.
The APNU+AFC has made some bad mistakes (bad is too light a word, how about horrible) but Guyanese do not deserve a return of the PPP’s corrupt leaders. Imagine oil revenue in the hands of the PPP! By the 2025 elections, the entire treasury will not even have a useless five-dollar coin.

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