The PNC/R is predictable

May 29, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – The PNC/R is afraid of its own “jumbie’. It has suddenly discovered that the Corentyne communities of Zambia and Little Africa are being neglected.
But what did the PNC/R do for these communities during its five years in office? The PPP/C has only been returned to office for less than two years and therefore the neglect which the PNC/R is railing against is essentially that which was left behind by the APNU+AFC government.
It was the APNU+AFC – of which the PNC/R is the chief cook and bottle washer – which had doubled land rates and taxes in farming communities. Those increases were intended to allow it to provide better services. So where did the money go?
No one complained when in 2016, the then APNU+AFC government, distributed community grants to 10 community groups drawn from Kildonan, Light Town, Zambia-Black Bush Polder, No. 53 Village, Fyrish, Nurney, Sisters Village and Liverpool-Manchester-Lancaster.
No one said anything also when the APNU+AFC rolled out its Rural Agricultural Infrastructural Development (RAID) project in Ithaca, Buxton, Beterverwagting and Mocha. No one complained then about neglect.
When in Opposition, the PNC/R’s playbook is predictable. It starts with the claim of ethnic economic marginalisation and neglect. In so doing it appeals to the notion of ethnic victimhood. And so it goes around pointing to neglect in certain communities. This has been a long-standing and traditional tactic which is echoed by its sidekicks in the labour movement.
The theory of ethnic economic marginalisation, however, has long been debunked. For more than a decade, under PPP/C governments, the faltering bauxite industry was sustained by subventions provided by the State. In fact, on a per capita basis, Region 10 enjoys a far higher degree of support from PPP/C governments than many other Regions.
The last income and expenditure survey also debunks the claim of ethnic economic marginalisation. In a study undertaken by Dr. Ramesh Gampat and entitled “Guyana: Population, Poverty and Ethnicity”, it was found that in terms of headcount more Indians lived in poverty than Africans.
The second tactic of the PNC/R’s playbook is the claim of ethnic discrimination by the state in relation to employment. Over the next five years, you can hear sustained claims about how many persons have been dismissed from the public service by the government and the hint that these dismissals were, in the main, driven by ethnicity.
What is not said is that the PPP/C government does not have the power to dismiss public servants. Public servants enjoy security of tenure and can only be dismissed by the Public Service Commission. Those whose services have been terminated were contract employees, just as those who were terminated under the APNU+AFC were contract employees.
But the Opposition is going to raise a hue and storm about the thousands who were dismissed. They, however, have failed to provide a list of those who were dismissed by the PPP/C as well as by those who were sent home when the APNU+AFC assumed office in 2015.
The APNU+AFC is predictable. It plays from the same playbook all the time. But even though the APNU+AFC tactics are predictable, the PPP/C has been ineffectual in countering the Opposition’s propaganda. And this is because despite having high-paid political operatives in the government, the PPP’s public relations is grossly incompetent.
The third tactic is to use an incident to create disturbances in the country. Hoyte did that with the protests by some farmers on the West Coast of Demerara and the APNU did the same when two youngsters were brutally murdered in West Coast Berbice.
The fourth tactic is the mushrooming of extremist talk show (and now social media) activists. They spew their almost daily poison of division and animosity, reverting to sweeping and unsubstantiated generalisations. These extremist elements have a large following who tune-in for their daily fix of vitriol.
The APNU+AFC is therefore predictable. Whatever tactics they employ should not surprise the PPP/C. You can bet that in the years ahead, they will continue to lament what they call neglect of certain communities and discrimination in public sector employment.
They will point, for example, to the PPP/C’s support for the sugar workers and ignore the massive per capita electricity subsidy to Linden. But the APNU+AFC will not assume any responsibility for the dismissal of almost 7,000 sugar workers and the fact that some of them had to wait an inordinate time for their benefits.
The neglect of community is not confined to African villages. It is therefore hoped that the PNC/R will also be visiting areas populated by other ethnic groups, including our indigenous peoples who are living in poor conditions.
The PNC/R therefore needs to change its tune. By adopting a more class-based analysis, it would be doing a greater service to its constituents and to the people of Guyana because right now it is the poor people who are being marginalised and neglected.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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