Dear Editor,
Not having full time responsibility of being the General Secretary of the PPP allows for travel extensively in Guyana.
Not that such travels did not occur in the past, however, nowadays it is with greater ease such travels are done at one’s own leisure and unannounced.
The beauty of this activity is, as always, meeting and chatting with the ordinary Guyanese working man and woman in the natural environment.
The stories they tell and experiences they share make you ask yourself; why didn’t I think about that before?
The cane cutter/sugar worker has a wealth of experience of life in the cane fields, in his or her union, with GuySuCo officials, in the estate where they live and above all, family life and the difficulties of maintaining a reasonable standard of living.
They talk more openly, more freely. Mind you, this applies to both Afro and Indo Guyanese sugar workers.
Fishermen are equally vociferous in highlighting their concerns especially with respect to piracy and the dangers at sea.
Their stories and experiences cast in out-at-sea drama can be nail-biting to say the least.
Farmers be they in rice, cash crops, cane or coconuts are a calculating but conservative lot, with a growing number of a more imaginative and adventurous group working hard to keep up with modernised methods of agricultural production with a focus on yields per acre and marketable varieties of produce.
What is amazing is the fact that the majority of the toilers in the productive sector display a high degree of political consciousness.
And springing from their socio-psychological frame of mind is a sense of alienation and marginalization suffered under the current APNU+AFC coalition administration.
Many of the benefits/subsidies/concessions they received under the PPP/C administration that allowed production to surge impressively have either been eliminated or replaced by more repressive taxation measures.
To vent their frustration and opposition to these oppressive anti-productive sector measures farmers have resorted to protests in various parts of the country including the city of Georgetown and outside the Ministry of the Presidency.
One cannot help drawing certain conclusions, in respect to recent protests by the opponents of the parking meters, the imposition of VAT on private education, farmers mobilised by the Rice Producers’ Association and sugar workers organised by the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers’ Union.
From all appearances, the massive concrete wall built around the Ministry of the Presidency, was constructed as a security deterrent and no doubt, at a humungous cost with the protestors in mind.
This wasteful and unnecessary spending by the Granger administration on projects which people can’t eat nor produce anything from is exemplified in the D’Urban Park stadium costing some $1b, the scandalous drugs bond costing $12.5m per month, the anticipated rental of the Lamaha and Camp streets building at a cost of US$28k per month, the anticipated construction of a new headquarters for the Guyana Revenue Authority projected to cost some $227m, not leaving out that the exorbitant costs to upgrade State House and the buildings in the compound are not going down well with the common man and woman irrespective of ethnicity. They view all these as wasteful prestige projects, the funding for which could have been better spent by reinstating the social programmes initiated by the PPP/C administration.
The solidarity and common cause between Afro and Indo Guyanese sugar workers at the grass root level is indeed remarkable.
The rice farmers feel a sense of betrayal by the AFC in particular who had promised them $9,000 a bag for paddy were they to assume office. Having assumed office, that promise never materialized in fact, it turned out to be an anti-PPP ploy to dupe the farmers to gain votes.
But the political pendulum has since swung in the direction of the PPP. So much so that one letter writer called on the APNU+AFC to ‘prove that it is a caring government.’
And there have been several letters to the editor across the media spectrum describing the APNU+AFC coalition administration as a ‘one term government.’
This evoked an aggressive, if not threatening response from citizen Ogunseye demanding an end to the prediction of ‘one term government’ as if the handwriting on the wall can be erased by his written entreaties.
Everywhere, throughout the length and breadth of Guyana there is a call for the PPP/C to return to office. It is as if the removal of the PPP/C from government was a blessing in disguise.
The older folk had warned ‘those who don’t hear will have to feel.’
Those who mistakenly fell prey and became gullible to the anti- PPP/C propaganda calling for change have now come to their senses and realised that the bitter medicine they are experiencing today is beyond their wildest expectations.
One farmer in the perceptive manner typical of the peasantry expressed his fear of rigged elections in 2020.
He suggested that one way to avoid rigging is to have cameras placed at every polling station with off-site viewing. When confronted with the cost of such a venture his response was, why look at the cost of doing it? The Opposition should look at the cost of not doing it!
Rigging of the 2020 elections seems to be uppermost in the political consciousness of Guyanese who want a change of government.
This thinking is also widespread among the Guyanese diaspora in Canada, the US and the U.K.
It is a deeply and justifiably held suspicion based on past experiences.
These experiences must not be ignored after all, as the saying goes; ‘Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.’
Yours faithfully,
Clement J. Rohee
