Despite losing Georgetown and with several of its high-profile crossover candidates suffering stinging defeats, PPP General Secretary Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday said that the government has a plan to transform the city and will stick to it.
The ruling PPP/C has been frequently accused of stifling and stymieing the opposition-led City Council. Jagdeo told a press conference yesterday that efforts to transform the city will proceed unimpeded.
Jagdeo said that his party, being the government, will stick to their promises and deliver to the people in every local authority area who placed their trust in them.
“The reason we went out during the campaign is to give people the assurance that every promise made by the candidates by the PPP, that we stand behind those promises,” Jagdeo said before noting that they are looking at ways in which they can implement the party’s manifesto promises. He stressed that they have every intention of implementing the transformative plan for the city and every region and they plan to move ahead wherever they can without obstructing local governance plans.
“I know what the plans are because we have laid them out and we’re implementing them. We plan to go ahead. We have a plan to change the city …” he stated before contending that the implementation could have been easier if they had control of the city or a council which is willing to work with the government.
While the candidates who crossed over from the opposition APNU failed to deliver victories, Jagdeo yesterday said that they contributed significantly to the success of the party’s gains at Monday’s Local Government Elections.
Ahead of last Monday’s polls, the PPP/C had revealed that popular longtime supporters of the opposition A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) had crossed over and were listed among their candidates. Notable among them were former Georgetown Mayor, Patricia Chase-Green, former Councillors Trichria Richards and Malcolm Ferreira, and former Alliance for Change member Audwin Rutherford of Linden. In New Amsterdam, former APNU Parliamentarian Barbara Pilgrim also came out to back the PPP/C.
When asked his thoughts on the failure of the crossover candidates to generate the ‘landslide’ win they wanted, Jagdeo said, “These crossover candidates are very courageous people. They knew everything was stacked against them. They knew they were contesting in APNU strongholds and they made that decision to cross to us.” He argued that the work of the crossover candidates was a major plus to his party’s victory as they did increase the number of votes received from areas that were historically opposed to the PPP. At the press conference, he stressed that the votes the PPP/C garnered in the city increased by 7,050 when compared to that received in the 2018 election.
Jagdeo noted that the increase in votes came from the non-traditional voting grounds such as Constituency 10 Albouystown/Charlestown, where Ferreira campaigned. The PPP/C votes increased by 473, while in constituencies 12 Tucville – North Ruimveldt and West and East Ruimveldt, where Chase-Green backed their candidate, Roneta Small and Trichria Richards respectively, the number of votes moved upwards by 528 and 468. Ferreira had won his constituency in the 2016 election but fell to the APNU candidate this time around. Stabroek News had earlier reported in Constituency 13 in Georgetown – West Ruimveldt-East Ruimveldt, the APNU candidate, Winston Harding, easily defeated PPP/C candidate Richards. The margin of victory was large and the victory for APNU underlined the view that voters were voting along party lines and were not moved by the defectors. According to official results, Harding, who was previously accused of child molestation but later cleared, obtained 1,944 votes, more than one hundred percent than the number of votes Richards gathered which was 681 votes.
In Constituency 12 – Tucville – North Ruimveldt where the PPP/C had appeared convinced that it had pulled off a coup by drawing former APNU Mayor Chase-Green to its camp, the ruling party got a shellacking.
APNU’s candidate Troy Gordon Garraway handily defeated Small who had been taken around the constituency by Chase-Green during campaign. Garraway, GECOM results showed, swept through the constituency with 2,970 votes while Small only managed to scrape 581.
In Constituency 10 – Albouystown – Charlestown, the candidate fielded by APNU, Traves Cleon won against Ferreira. “They knew that these were tough areas to work in… These candidates who crossed the floor and came to us made a difference to us…” Jagdeo declared.
He noted that in New Amsterdam they saw an estimated 113% increase in votes from 1,095 in 2018 to 2,337 while in Linden votes for his party increased by over 2000. “This is not just inroads but major impacts… a massive feat… we have picked up more support in APNU strongholds,” he disclosed. “I want to thank the people in those areas because our flags flew there untouched. Historically that wouldn’t have happened,” he added.
Jagdeo was however quick to note that his party will not toss aside the candidates but rather embrace them as a part of their family. Those candidates, he emphasised will not be thrown aside “or suddenly they can’t see me or any PPP official again…Once you enter our family that’s it, we cling to you…All who voted and supported us, we see them as part of our family. They are in it for the long haul. Many of them called and said we got to work to 2025 now…that’s the attitude throughout,” Jagdeo said.
The party’s General Secretary also used the opportunity to reject opposition claims that the PPP/C did not make significant inroads in their strongholds. “They are saying that they won the elections, and they made great inroads and that the PPP did not achieve what it set out to do. We have won 906 of 1220 seats. By any definition anywhere in the world, a 75 per cent win is a massive win. We have won the majority of the votes, we had more than 60 LAA’s (local authority areas) and we had about 66 overall, where we won the largest number of votes in those areas,” he said.
