PNC/AFC’s campaign rhetoric is not a vision for Guyana’s future

Jan 30, 2025 Letters

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Dear Editor,

As we approach this year’s elections, please allow me space to analyse the PNC/AFC’s campaign strategy thus far. It revolves around three distinct but equally desperate themes.

 

1)    Vilify GECOM

2)    Weaponise accusations of racism

3)    Peddle empty promises

I begin with the first theme – the vilification of GECOM, the very institution they once lauded when it served their purposes. It is now a convenient scapegoat for their inevitable failures. Take their call for biometrics, a demand they frame as reform but is, in reality, nothing more than political theatre. This push for biometrics gained momentum after their devastating loss in 2020, when, in an incredible act of irony, they accused the PPP of electoral fraud. Their strategy is transparent: when you can’t win the game, you attack the rules.

In another act of pure theatre, the AFC’s Nigel Hughes solemnly announced plans to “engage the international community” over what they perceive as GECOM’s supposed failings. But one has to wonder: which members of the international community are they hoping to convince?

Is it the Americans who imposed visa restrictions and sanctions on APNU/AFC officials for their attempted theft of the 2020 elections and who they continue to accuse of “installing” an “illegitimate” PPP/C government? Perhaps the British, who unequivocally stated, “Any government sworn in on the basis of non-credible results will face strong international condemnation and consequences.” Or maybe the Canadians, who made it clear that they will continue to “…demand a swift and transparent conclusion to the election process and hold accountable those who prevent it.” Or, given their penchant for theatrics, it might very well be the Russians or the Venezuelans whose democratic credentials more closely reflect the APNU/AFC ethos.

When they engage with the international community, will they finally reveal their long-lost SOPs? Will they provide an update on their “internal investigation” into their party’s involvement in what Bruce Golding, head of the OAS Mission, aptly described as “the most transparent effort to alter the results of an election”?

The audacity to now pretend to court these very nations—who publicly condemned their attempts to derail democracy in 2020—is almost admirable in its delusion. The APNU/AFC’s second ploy is to label any detractors as “racist,” a strategy every bit as dangerous as it is disingenuous. If everything is racist, then nothing is. They reserve their most vicious, degrading insults for Afro-Guyanese who disagree with them, branding them with demeaning slurs like “house slaves,” “house negros,” “Uncle Toms,” “soup drinkers,” and “traitors,” or accusing them of being bought. Readers will no doubt remember the disgraceful scenes in Parliament when PNC MP Maureen Philadelphia towered over Eon McPherson, spewing venomous abuse and degrading him with the slur “house negro”—a moment that perfectly encapsulates the Opposition’s toxic hypocrisy. Shaquawn Gill recently captured this hypocrisy perfectly in his letter to the Guyana Times: “It shows the Opposition’s inherent disdain for Guyanese who exercise their liberty to freely associate and comment on the political events happening around them. It’s almost as if the moment you disagree with the Opposition, rather than commencing a decent and informed debate, you are forced into an abyss of name-calling, with the label of a slave being thrown around loosely by the very people who many times claim to be upholding the rights and dignity of Afro-Guyanese.”

Their third ploy is to peddle empty promises and harebrained policies utterly devoid of substance. If we were to take their ludicrous promises at face value—despite their abysmal track record—we would have to believe they’ve somehow mastered financial alchemy: simultaneously saving all the oil revenues while recklessly spending them all on absurd schemes. These include rent subsidies(instead of promoting sustainable homeownership), raising the income tax threshold to $400,000 (to be paid for apparently with magic beans), and, in a final leap into fantasy, proposing to distribute what amounts to over 1 trillion GYD in cash grants—a figure that far exceeds the total revenues from oil and gas. These promises expose either a staggering ignorance of fiscal realities or a cynical attempt to deceive the Guyanese public. I conclude by stating the obvious: the PNC/AFC’s campaign rhetoric is not a vision for Guyana’s future—it is a calculated attempt to mislead, relying on theatrics, inflammatory rhetoric, and promises that collapse under the slightest scrutiny.

Sincerely,

Alfonso De Armas

(PNC/AFC’s campaign rhetoric is not a vision for Guyana’s future)

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• APNU/AFC officials, biometrics, Canadians, electoral fraud, GECOM, racism

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