APNU leaders last evening took aim at President Donald Ramotar over his failure to honour an elections promise to hold local government polls within a year of taking office and urged public support for planned protests to send a strong signal to his government.
“It is clear our people are being denied their constitutional rights. Our children have no place to play, and your health is threatened,” APNU Member of Parliament and Shadow Local Government Minister Ronald Bulkan told a crowd of over 300 persons at an APNU public meeting last night at the Stabroek Market Square.
The crowd chanted the “shameless government must go” as APNU members voiced their disgust that the elections have not been held in 20 years.
Bulkan impressed upon his audience that they were been denied their constitutional right. He said local government elections are a constitutional requirement and a vital aspect of democracy as he highlighted the “many ways” local governance has collapsed in the country. He said the drainage systems were in shambles and children’s playgrounds were abandoned and padlocked because they had become overgrown with weeds.
During the 2011 elections campaign, the PPP/C manifesto said the local government elections would be held within a year of the party being elected into office. However, nearly three years have passed and Ramotar’s administration has showed no “inclination toward local democracy,” Bulkan said, while prompting the people to “say no to PPP dictatorship and yes to local government elections.”
Annette Ferguson, another APNU Member of Parliament, said that while the people have been denied their rights to “man the affairs of their communities” by the PPP not holding local government elections, APNU believed in democracy and was ready to “rumble” with the government to get it. “We can no longer trust this government because in 2011 Ramotar, the president of this country, said to you, the people, that once the PPP/C returns to office his administration will ensure that you, the people, will be given local government election in the next year. But comrades, if we are to do the calculation, when he said it in November 28, 2011… some three years later Guyana is yet to hold local government elections,” she said.
“Do you think this fair?” she asked.
The crowd shouted no.
Ferguson insisted that the people examine their roads and playfields in their communities. “We have a civil duty to ask ourselves whether democracy has truly returned to this nation! Because this government does not concern where you live. They do not experience the hurdles that you experience on a daily basis,” she asserted.
“The minsters, they don’t drive streets that are made of potholes. They don’t drive streets that don’t have street lights. They do not live in communities that water isn’t running freely or the drains aren’t running freely. But comrades, you, the people who live in Albouystown, look what you have to face on a daily basis,” she said.
“APNU is ready to rumble with the government,” she declared, while stating that they expected the people to come out in the masses because a strong signal needed to be sent to the Ramotar administration. Deputy-Mayor Patricia Chase-Green also spoke at the meeting and she said that the countdown to local government elections has started and that APNU will start off its protests on Sunday with a vigil at the Stabroek Market Square.
Opposition leader David Granger on Thursday announced that APNU would embark on a campaign of “lawful, orderly, peaceful public protests,” to raise public awareness about the failure to hold the elections, which have not been held since 1994.
