PPP/C General Secretary Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday proclaimed his party’s inclusiveness, while urging supporters to use social media to defend its track record even as he accused sections of the media of joining with the opposition to attack the government
Speaking at Babu Jaan, Corentyne, where he, President Irfaan Ali and others had travelled to commemorate the life and work of former president Cheddi Jagan, Jagdeo, noting the diverse crowd gathered, concluded that the PPP/C was the only multiracial party in Guyana. “If you look around here, no other political party in this country can put together a gathering of this nature that is multiracial,” he said, stressing that they went there voluntarily.
He said that his party, while in opposition, openly admitted that more needed to be done to engage Afro Guyanese, to bring them into the party which was strong in Indo-Guyanese representation with growing representation from the Amerindians. “But we have historically failed to bring a large number of Afro Guyanese into the party,” he said. According to him, this was owing to distortion and rumours from the current opposition, adding that Jagan struggled daily to bring persons together.
According to Jagdeo, the APNU and AFC have used the “rumour machine” to distort what the PPP/C stands for, and labelled it a “racist party.” However, he said, “Our practices, our policies, our philosophy, all speak differently and today we are fighting this in every single community and it has resonance now.” The PPP/C, he said, has gained momentum with party groups and cells being formed in “every one of these villages.”
According to Jagdeo, it is “the racism of the PNC” which will lead to its demise as it is already rapidly dying and that the PPP/C, at the next general election, will prove that the opposition is dying definitively.
Meanwhile, Jagdeo claimed that recently the opposition has attempted to “bad mouth” the government in the international community “to say this is a racist government.” However, he pointed out that the country’s judicature, legislature and executive bodies accurately represent Guyana with diversity.
Use social media
He urged supporters multiple times to use social media to defend the party’s track record. He explained that in the past the party allowed the “narrative from the other side to overpower us” which led to them losing government in 2015.
He claimed that the then government used social media to distort what his party stood for and to gain mileage throughout the country “and we did not do enough in 2015 to fight back against that narrative and it led to our demise. So today when we fight the naysayers, many people think we are intolerant of criticisms, we are not intolerant of criticisms, we don’t hate NGOs… We are just fighting to defend our records. We will fight tooth and nail every single day to speak about the record and achievement of this party and if we don’t do it, if all of you who are here don’t set up a Facebook page or Instagram page or something else and join that fight, they will succeed again… They have some in the media who support this narrative.”
Jagdeo claimed that some sections of the media will not question “an organisation like Transparency International of Guyana that sent a report in 2019 to the International Transparency Organisation” which had several disparities which including that APNU had stopped a corrupt parking meter deal “when the fact was that they instituted the corrupt parking meter deal…
“They said that APNU published all the oil contracts and you know we had to fight for that to happen. And they said that APNU resuscitated the Integrity Commission when we know that is a lie.”
He stressed that the two major battles are to fight against racism and point out which is the “racist party in Guyana and which is the party that is working for all of the people in our country”. He urged supporters to defend against distortions from those such as “GHRA, a one-man organisation” who created a website and is being treated with credibility.
“Every day they have rolled out a whole set of these people,” he continued. “The Anand Goolsarran, who was part of the AFC coalition could not say a word about the abuse of public accounts and everything else, the corruption in the five years, suddenly they are approaching elections again, they rolled him out as a fossil. They even rolled out Hamilton Green.”
According to Jagdeo, during the 2020 elections fiasco, “none of those civil society organisations were on the street with us protesting this, in fact, they were being coddled by the APNU…”
Modern framework
Jagdeo said it was the longevity of his party’s ideas that attracted people, adding that the PPP/C has transformed the country from “bankruptcy to the most viable and fastest growing economy in this region”.
He said that they committed that the same fiscal discipline displayed in bringing a bankrupt country back to viability would characterise “all of our dealings with the oil and gas sector.
“Today, we hear a lot of people talking about the framework. In two and a half short years we have put in place, and are putting in place, one of the most modern frameworks to manage the industry anywhere in the world.
“We already amended the fiscal terms of the PSA. We are coming up with a new PSA so any new development now the royalty rate goes from 2% to 10%, and the companies have to start paying taxes here, unlike the agreement signed by the APNU.”
He added that the Local Content Law passed by his government has brought nearly US$700 million in business and business opportunities to Guyanese “because we believe that this industry must work for our people too, not the foreigners alone.”
He claimed that while in opposition, during his visits to Berbice, it was noticeable that the county was dying, accusing the then government of having a deliberate policy to kill the region Jagan hailed from.
Pointing to the closure of sugar estates and loss of thousands of jobs, Jagdeo said, “We managed in this county to rehire half of the people that they laid off… We’ve put together nearly 4,000 persons who are working on part-time jobs now, so that in the short term in this region alone we can start boosting the welfare of the region and the economy of the region.”
He said this was similar to what was happening throughout the country as having regained government the PPP/C has been crafting a plan to deal with the “future welfare and accomplish the vision.”
