The PPP has started preparations for general and regional elections and its list of candidates will be ready for Nomination Day which should be in the first two weeks in February, according to the party’s General Secretary Bharrat Jagdeo.
“We are already starting to discuss, not only the presidential candidate – from tomorrow (today) we would have presentations from the five. We have already started to work on candidates at the regional level for the geographic list and the national top up list,” Jagdeo said at a press conference at his Queenstown office yesterday. He was asked if the party will be ready for elections.
The five candidates vying for the PPP’s presidential candidate slot are Irfaan Ali, Dr Frank Anthony, Anil Nandlall, Dr Vindhya Persaud and Gail Teixeira.
Jagdeo said that once the presidential candidate is elected by the PPP’s Central Committee, a prime ministerial candidate will be selected. The party is in the process of putting in place all its structures for its electioneering, he said.
As he was speaking, Jagdeo said, some of the party’s leaders were on the Essequibo Coast getting the people ready for the elections.
“We are ready to take this. It is just a matter of time for us. We will keep making the same promises that we make to everybody. We are reaching out. We want to get as many people to join us. We want as many people to contribute to our policies,” he said.
The party has set up a manifesto committee and will start to meet with various segments of society. “We are setting up a number that they can call in and share ideas for our manifesto,” Jagdeo said. A lot of what the manifesto will contain, he said, is already known.
“It is about jobs and cost of living, the reversal of a lot of the hardship measures that the APNU put in place. That will pre-occupy us in the first year or so,” he said. A lot of the manifesto promises would be getting the economy going again and involving young people, according to Jagdeo.
“We are going on a platform of inclusion. Everybody in Guyana must benefit from the future,” he said. On the talk that the PPP members want to get their hands on the money expected to flow from oil and gas, Jagdeo said, “That is their rhetoric.”
The PPP has made it clear, he claimed, that a new PPP government will pass legislation to criminalise behaviour that takes oil revenue and does not account for it. The PPP has made it clear that every cent collected from oil companies has to be reported to the National Assembly and published in a gazette in a particular timeframe, maybe a month or two, by the Secretary to the Treasury and the Minister of Finance, according to Jagdeo.
“Should they fail to do that, they would have a jail term associated with just failure to inform the country about receipt of money from oil companies,” he said.
That will be one of the first pieces of legislation outside of the ones for the sovereign wealth fund and the other issues like a local content policy, he said. The streamlining of the structure of the energy department versus the petroleum commission, he said, is another issue a new PPP government will have to deal with.
“All these things have to be worked on urgently. That is the first thing, so nobody could collect a single cent from the oil resources and have it there. We are ready. We know what we have to do,” he said.
There are a lot of things that civil society wants that guarantees a better life that a PPP government is prepared to give, according to Jagdeo. “We will be accountable to people, in office. That there will be safeguards for public expenditure. All these are part of our plan and they will be rolled out. We are ready logistically,” he said.
Noting that there was a poll going around on the party’s presidential candidates that was not authorised by the party, he said, about 20 persons have told him that every time they click on the poll, the numbers are not moving upwards.
“I believe that it’s done by someone not necessarily sympathetic to the PPP who want to spread dissent on our ranks. Whoever is selected, the same people will try to come after that candidate and we will rally around that candidate because the party has a programme and that programme will be pursued,” he said.
After the voting for the presidential candidate is done by secret ballot, he said, all of the candidates will work together with the party’s leadership and the rank and file.
