Amid consternation and mounting criticism of statements she made at Congress Place on November 25th about allocating jobs only to PNCR members, the party’s Chairman and the Minister of Public Health, Volda Lawrence yesterday issued an apology.
The apology came eight days after the statements were made and days after an earlier one in which she did not address the gravamen of the matter.
In the apology posted on her Facebook page, the PNCR Chairman and Public Health Minister said:
“My name is Volda Lawrence. Over the last 30 plus years, I have given service to my people and country. I have fought for my fellow countrymen and women known and unknown, irrespective of their class, creed or political affiliation. I have fought for freedom, equal rights and justice. The rhetoric attributed to me over the last few days, is not reflective of who I am as a person or leader. I have learned that as a leader I must be cognizant of what I say and do, and must not allow emotions or political fervour to get in the way. So to all those whom I have offended in one way or another, I humbly apologize. Thank you.”
Lawrence made no attempt to explain any of the statements that she had made and which have left questions unanswered.
Lawrence was recorded at the November 25th meeting telling attendees that they should not be afraid to give jobs or contracts to party comrades while indicating that she does the same.
“Well I got news for you: The only friends I got is PNC, so the only people I could give work to is PNC. And, right now, I looking for a doctor who can talk Spanish or Portuguese and ah want one that is PNC,” she is heard saying.
The presentation appeared to be a charge to those who had recently won seats or had been selected to serve on local government bodies following the November 12th local government polls where the party lost ground to the opposition PPP/C.
Lawrence was also heard addressing the PPP/C’s capture of more seats on the Georgetown City Council at the polls. She said “there are 15 constituencies in Georgetown hence there are 30 seats around the Horseshoe table and the PPP ensured that they had 28 people looking like me running for Georgetown and two looking like Jagdeo… do you understand the strategy?”
She added, “We like to assume that when we see someone looking a particular way, that they come from Robb Street but don’t assume that when you see someone looking like Comrade Sammy and Comrade Mahendra here, that they ain’t PNC. I come into the party and reach comrade Sammy. We got [to] bring more like them in. We want to win, we have to bring more of them in and they are here, they want to come in but some of us we so righteous and judgmental that the people can’t come in. Comrades, politics is a numbers game; there are many out there who didn’t enjoy the sweet of the PPP table and they see some good in us and our policies, such as social cohesion. The PPP is afraid of social cohesion but we must embrace it so we can take back the seat on the East Bank and East Coast.”
She further said, “We don’t have to wait no three years comrades there are mechanisms for us to go back to the polls. You see this long, long story, me ain’t able buse and cuss and waste me time; I lash you in you head and done the story. Done the story. Sometimes we like to yap, yap, yap, yap too much. Comrades; we have to run things in those NDCs… the same ones they say we lose. I challenge those on the East Bank and East Coast to get back into those NDCs and take them over. Don’t run from this stupidness—dem ain’t vote fo we because in some of these NDCs we just miss by a few votes. Take the statistics which you have and start to pick them off one by one. Before the three years out we must have another election going on in those constituencies. They took three from us in Georgetown… they got it in names and we will take it back. We will use the law, which is on our side and we will take it back.”
Her statement “I lash you in you head and done the story” has evoked consternation and remains completely unexplained by her or her party, the PNCR which has remained silent on the matter.
On Sunday, the leader of the Alliance For Change (AFC), which is in the governing coalition with Lawrence’s group, APNU, rose to her defence.
AFC Leader Raphael Trotman dismissed concerns over the controversial statements.
“The Chair (Lawrence), I as Leader have known and worked closely with for 25 years has never shown racial or political partisanship, but in fact, has worked tirelessly, as politician and as a minister of government for the betterment of people of all walks of life and all backgrounds,” Trotman said in a public statement after being contacted by this newspaper yesterday for a comment on the controversy over Lawrence’s recorded remarks.
Trotman, who is a former member of the PNCR, said that the statement on Sunday conveyed his personal views. “It was issued by me as leader,” he said.
Senior WPA member Dr David Hinds was critical of Lawrence. The WPA is also a member of governing coalition partner, APNU.
Hinds said it is foolish for the coalition to merely dismiss the concerns of the people over Lawrence’s statements as he believes that it has the propensity to negatively impact voters at what would be the fiercely contested 2020 general elections.
“I think it would have a negative impact on independent voters of all ethnic groups—the very group of voters that helped to push the Coalition from the PNC’s 34% share of the vote in 2006 to 51% in 2015. The Coalition needs those voters to win. But that kind of rhetoric would signal to those voters that the PNC has resorted to the old politics. The Coalition attracted those voters because they thought they were voting for something new, that the PNC had turned its back on that kind of crude politics and that the WPA and AFC would not tolerate it”, he told Stabroek News.
He said that Lawrence’s “rhetoric threatens to exhume the ghosts of the PNC’s past” and makes a mockery of the new politics promised by the coalition.
“I have sympathy for the Minister’s apparent frustration with the ethnic imbalance in the political economy which was taken to exorbitant levels by the last government. But that imbalance cannot be corrected by overt cronyism and clientelism. It never did and never will. The Minister is part of a government that has done precious little to correct that situation via a fair and just policy. So if she feels strongly about the issue, she should be urging her government in that direction. That kind of rhetoric would scare away independent voters while giving the opposition potent political ammunition to use against the government. I don’t buy the nonsense that she is only saying aloud what is the norm. If it is wrong it should not be said period,” he added.
He believes that if politicians don’t have a commonsense answer to political defeat, they panic and resort to overt race-baiting and crass calls for ethno-political solidarity.
That behaviour, according to Hinds would be a political disaster detrimental for the coalition come 2020.
The WPA is yet to say anything about Lawrence’s statements.
Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo has said that “Volda Lawrence could be charged for this because our labour law says that you cannot discriminate against people on the basis of their gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, whatever else. She is making it clear that she is going to discriminate on the basis of their politics”.
Chartered accounting firm Ram and McRae condemned Lawrence’s statements.
It said in an epilogue to its annual review of the budget:
“Ms. Volda Lawrence, chairperson of the PNC/R, a cabinet member and the leading partner in the Coalition Government, is quoted in the Stabroek News as telling a PNC/R Conference: “… the only friends I got is PNC, so the only people I could give work to is PNC.”
Forget for a moment that Ms. Lawrence ignores the Reform component of her Party and recognise only that a Senior Cabinet Minister of the APNU+AFC Government publicly admits that at least sections of this Administration is openly admitting discriminatory employment with an undisguised hint of ethnic preferences. This is unconstitutional, shocking and disgraceful.
“Ms. Lawrence’s Ministry of Public Health is allocated a total sum of $25,223 million in the 2019 Budget. We note too that her Ministry has already been implicated in a number of tainted procurements amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, in violation of the law. This raises the serious possibility that the 2019 Budget, potentially the last full year Budget before the 2020 elections, will be used for discriminatory employment practices and other spending, not only in “Ms. Lawrence’s Ministry but in the Government as a whole. It therefore raises the further question about the extent to which this Budget may contain disguised political spending.
With the major political parties each having a strong ethnic base, the statement reinforces the public racism narrative, and leaves the most apolitical, objective observer in Guyana with little option but to question whether this is an embedded policy among party leaders.
Five days after this disgraceful statement, neither the President, her Cabinet colleagues nor any of the leaders of the Coalition Parties have found this egregiously offensive declaration objectionable to them. This is ominous and may set the stage for one of the most confrontational campaigns for what her colleague Minister described as the “mother of all elections.”
Lawrence’s statements came while PNCR Leader and President, David Granger has been unwell and is being treated for lymphoma. No senior government official has yet commented on her statements.
