Has the PNCR/APNU now transitioned to a fully fledged ethnic party prone to violence and threats of violence? It seems so, notwithstanding that Indian Guyanese and of other ethnicities are in its leadership.
Form the moment in October 1992 that the PPP/C came to office, it was accused of election rigging and ethnic cleansing. It was alleged to have rigged the 1992 elections even though it had no control over the government or the elections administration. Its dismissal, or required resignation, of political appointees was deemed to be ethnic cleansing. The accusations of the PPP/C remotely rigging elections inside and outside the government, no matter how ridiculous, persists as tenaciously today as accusations of marginalization and discrimination against African Guyanese. These postures have generated a regular political diet of anti-Indian-Guyanese political violence since 1992. The allegedly 400 African Guyanese and the Shaka Blair killings in April 2002, also formed the retaliatory justification for the criminal terrorism between 2002 and 2008, with its mass slaughter of Indian Guyanese, including children, at Lusignan and Bartica, the reverberations of which are still being heard in our courts. The PNCR/APNU has never responded to the requests of its critics to point to the policies it implemented between 1964 and 1992 to enhance the economic power of African Guyanese, to expand their share in Guyana’s economic resources or the development of their entrepreneurial capacity.