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‘Stop living in the past’ – AFC tells Govt to stop comparing Guyana’s non-oil economy to current situation
Leader of the AFC, Nigel Hughes
Kaieteur News – Leader of the Alliance for Change (AFC) Nigel Hughes said it is disingenuous of the government to be comparing the current oil-driven economy with what obtained before to score “cheap political points” insisting that as the economy grows the adminstration should focus on investing in a better quality of life for Guyanese.
At his party’s weekly press conference last week Hughes said Guyana is a sovereign state and the basis for progress should not be premised on what was done between 2015 and 2019. “So, assuming you didn’t have something between 2015 and 2020. What has that got to do with our failure to do it in 2024 as a country, it is a mind-boggling argument. That somehow the excuse is that it’s not being done because it wasn’t done before.”
Member of Parliament, Beverly Alert.
Hughes lamented that the citizens of Guyana deserve much better and if Guyana is moving forward to become a modern democratic society in which all citizens will participate equally and have the same opportunities then the comparison needs to stop. “We can’t be comparing 2015 to 2019 and if one wants to go the route of comparison on the 32 years between 1992 and today the People’s Progressive Party has been in office for 27 of those years. So, if you want to make a comparison you are making a comparison between somebody who has the opportunity to govern this country exclusively for 27 years and somebody who has only had the opportunity to govern it for three it’s not even five because when the no confidence motion came the government was restricted to only carrying out its basic functions to running the government. It couldn’t make any investment decisions, it couldn’t make any change of police because in the two years post December 2018 it was restricted,” Hughes said.
Furthermore, the AFC leader said, “what makes it even worse you’re comparing 27 years which is nine times the three effective years that the coalition had to make the change and I think that’s the context but like I said what one didn’t do before can’t be an excuse for why we’re failing today.”
Hughes comments follow frequent comparisons by Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo. Jagdeo has repeatedly said that the APNU+AFC government could have done much more for the citizens during its term in office. Meanwhile, AFC’s Beverly Alert said that it was “grossly unfair to compare 2015-2019 with 2020-2024 period.”
“It is unfair to compare a non-oil economy with an oil producing economy. What you can do in an oil producing economy when the GDP is growing by double digits 30%, 35%, 40% you can’t compare with an economy that was not seeing that growth. Our position is as the economy grows invest in a better quality of life for the people,” Alert said.
Further, Alert called on the government to be fair in the distribution of the country’s wealth. “Do not discriminate, it is that simple. Do not put the money into the people that already have money, do not enrich those who are already rich, let us bridge the divide and so let us invest in those hinterland communities where the children have to use pit latrines. Let us invest in riverside communities, let us bridge that divide between the haves and the have nots. Don’t compare apples and oranges, don’t compare what the coalition government was able to do without oil as to what this PPP government should be doing with this growth in the economy,” the AFC Member of Parliament said.
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