Repeatedly linking the PNCR to criminals, PPP/C officials including President Donald Ramotar told Barticians yesterday that the opposition has been the greatest hindrance to development in the country and warned of the creation of a “militarised” state should it get into power.
In what was the incumbent’s smallest crowd for any of its major rallies in recent years, the PPP/C team, which also included Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, Minister of Public Works Robeson Benn, and Minister of Public Service Jennifer Westford, spoke to a few hundred persons scattered across First Avenue, Bartica.
A significant number of these persons were brought from surrounding Amerindian communities and also included children. In advertisements, the PPP/C had said that its Prime Ministerial candidate Elisabeth Harper was going to be present but she was not. Westford announced that Harper was “out on official duties” overseas.
PPP General Secretary Clement Rohee was present but though listed on the programme to speak, he did not.
It was left to Benn and Ramotar to take the PPP/C’s message to the crowd and they focused on the past of the PNCR–which is now part of APNU–and the opposition’s actions in the last Parliament. They also repeatedly sought to link the PNCR to criminals and highlighted the ex-military and police officers in the APNU+AFC alliance.
Benn said the opposition will come to Bartica and say that they have the crew that will build Guyana. He highlighted that the alliance’s presidential candidate David Granger and alliance member Joseph Harmon have a military background, while alliance member Winston Felix was a former Commissioner of Police.
“It looks like we have a legionnaires club of old military people who want to establish a de facto militarised country again here in Guyana,” Benn said and emphasised that they are warning people against this development. He said they “must take warning that we have to keep these people out if we want to continue on the path of development and progress.”
Benn also highlighted the criminal activities during the 2002 to 2008 crime wave and suggested that the opposition was consorting with bandits and sought to link them to the Lusignan and Bartica massacres. “The same bullet and the same gun—some of them the army gave to the PNC in their day—reappeared for those killings,” he said. “Take warning,” he urged.
‘Serious times’
Benn’s line was picked up by Ramotar. He said the opposition took the side of the criminals when they voted against the anti-money laundering bill in the last Parliament and put Guyanese in danger. He also alluded to the guns picked up at Mahaicony after a shootout with criminals.
“The guns were guns that they took from the army. When they were in government they were giving weapons to the criminals,” he said. Ramotar also cited what has been coming out of the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry. “You heard right now… how much they financed the House of Israel to create terror and how much of that weapon have found themselves into the hands of criminals. These people consistently took the side of criminals in our society,” he said.
The president also accused attorneys in the opposition’s camp of representing criminals. “They cannot… in all respects, speak about security and they cannot offer security because their hands are stained,” he declared. “These are serious times because these are the same people now who want to get their hands on the State apparatus to get themselves elected in our country,” he said.
According to Ramotar, there is a new trend developing in the world. “We saw it happen in Egypt, where the military people they took off their uniform and put on…business suits and then they take over the government and they are shooting people every day in the streets of Cairo,” he said. “And that is something that we have to look at, if this is a trend that they want to continue in our world,” he continued.
Ramotar also highlighted that the last three years since he was elected have not been very easy for him. He said that the opposition had stymied many of government’s plans by cutting the budget.
He also highlighted some plans for the country. He said that should the PPP/C win the elections, the Amaila Falls Hydropower project will be on the top of the agenda and his government will make Guyana a powerhouse of energy. He said that once there is hydropower, light bills will come down by 20 to 40 percent “immediately.” He said that with the fuel subsidy saved, many problems can be solved.
He acknowledged that there is a need to modernise the traditional sectors. “The sugar and rice industry [have] to be restructured to become even stronger” and to continue to make contribution to the country, he said.
“We will ensure that new areas are opened so the small miners can have an opportunity to get their lands to do mining and more than that we will review some of the large holdings that many of the big, big people have and not using them, we will review to ensure that the ordinary people also got an opportunity to earn a good living from this sector as well,” he added. Small miners have long lamented that they are unable to access lands and a recent Mines Commission report said that “landlordism” had taken over the sector.
Ramotar also hit out at the Stabroek News and Kaieteur News. According to him, the Stabroek News will never like the PPP because “they said that the PPP, that Cheddi Jagan in particular deprive those who they represent from power.” The president said that in the past, the “old rich people used to make decisions for our country over a bottle of whiskey and they didn’t bother with parliament” and the late president Jagan and the PPP changed that by giving the people the right to vote and “they never forgive us for that.” He said that Stabroek News was being used to try to improve the influence of that class in the society.
In relation to Kaieteur News, he said that it has “all these haters too.” The president said that in the 1970s and 1980s when “food” was banned, “those people who got rich then were those who were doing the smuggling and bringing in the goods” and today they have plenty of money.
“They have a lot of money now but they don’t have political power and they want political power to do precisely what they were accusing of us. They want the state apparatus to entrench this new class, the nouveau riche in the society, and they see the PPP as a bulwark that’s stopping them from doing these things,” he alleged even as he pleaded for votes.
‘We want to continue to do the donkey work’
Earlier, Benn had noted comments by Granger who had suggested, in reference to the current leaders of the country, that they are jackasses.
The minister said if the development seen is what jackasses do, then the PPP “want to continue to be the jackasses” of Guyana. “We want to continue to do the donkey work to develop our country,” he said.
He stated that the PPP will build a road from Parika to Goshen and said that it is now under a feasibility study. Hangars will also be built at the Bartica airstrip and roads will continue to be maintained, he declared. Benn said he knows that there are some challenges “some lil corruption here and there that we have to clear out” but said that they will ensure that the country progresses.
Hinds, for his part, said that a new power station at a new location will be built in Bartica. He too expressed concern about ex-military personnel in the opposition. As he was linking Felix to a criminal incident, his microphone cut off and a voice rang out and heckled: “Yu lie.”
Bartica businessman Stephen Belle also spoke in support of the PPP.
Benn, as he asked for votes, said that the PPP/C would develop the country. “I want to say again that this donkey here is ready and willing again” to work for the development of the country, he declared.
