Dear Editor,
The polls opened Monday September 1st for Regional and General elections across Guyana. Political rallies were wrapped up and the campaigns were quite revealing.
It was said that President Ali deserved a second term for all the right reasons. He deserved a second term to continue his transformational vision for a better Guyana; for a “One Guyana”. He deserved a second term not because of lack of an alternative. He deserved a second term because he must step up to the plate, clean house, get rid of the miscreants in his administration; those who worked against him. He deserved a second term to deliver on stamping out corruption, nepotism, favouritism, incompetence and on improving public safety, security, access to quality health care, engender a more professional public service and assuage the nation of so many more of the troubles that ails this tiny nation now awash in oil money before the wells run dry or Dutch disease takes hold.
But something different unfolded on the night after the closing of the polls. The feeling across this nation was that a change was about to happen. There were new players on the scene and their support while not a tsunami pointed to a seismic tidal bore. Even before, long before the date was announced by President Mohamed Irfaan Ali, the incumbent PPP/C was basking in a groundswell of support on the heels of the attempted theft of the 2020 elections by the David Granger led APNU/AFC. But something happened and the political tides shifted. The goodwill that the PPP/C had taken for granted eroded. Team Mohamed’s WIN is posing a serious challenge to a PPP/C majority.
Much like the mood of the country in 2015, a great percentage of the people of this nation are extremely dissatisfied with the failure of the PPP/C administration to curb perceptions of corruption, nepotism, grafting, favouritism and gross incompetence. That compounded with constant reports of poor, shoddy and substandard infrastructural and maintenance projects along with the arrogance of party hacks and social media activists added to the erosion of the post 2020 elections goodwill enjoyed by the Ali Administration. What was once a sure bet, a slam dunk became a desperate fight for the minds and hearts and yes the votes of the people. When once it was the PPP/C’s for the taking, it became PPP/C’s to lose.
Alas, the PPP/C has not internalized the lessons of 2015. Smug, arrogant and sitting with a false sense of confidence, the electorate voted the Donald Ramotar led PPP/C government out of office in 2015. The people ousted and then returned the PPP/C to power in 2020. They were returned in spite of their past intransigence and on the poor performance, incompetence and mismanagement of the visionless Granger led APNU/AFC which rivalled and outstripped the badge of dishonour earned by the Ramotar pre-2015 PPP/C for all the wrong reasons.
While President Ali brought a new style of leadership, championed every new initiative and worked tireless to build a better Guyana, there appeared many under him that were rowing in the opposite direction. Never before in the history of this country had the electorate been subjected to this level of nastiness. The non-stop bombardment across social and traditional media remained vile, crass, vulgar and demeaning. No party can claim innocence but the PPP/C with its loose cannons appeared to have outdone itself.
The perception was therefore formed that many PPP/C players, activists and supporters thrived and flourished under this climate of corruption, victimization, nepotism, cronyism and favouritism along with the culture of bribery and incompetence of the arms of the law. Then there’s the failure to reduce poverty and uplift the lives of the lesser fortunate despite cash grants, 10-day worker programmes, GOAL training, uptick on housing and land titling etc. The common refrain from the common man was the oft repeated mantra – “People cannot eat roads”.