Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Mar 11, 2012 Letters
Dear Editor,
The latest ‘chess play’ by the PPP/C government to move to the courts to challenge the legality of the composition of the Parliamentary Select Committee should surprise no one. This announcement made by Mr. Anil Nandalall the Attorney General is all part of a grand scheme intended to bail the government out of its current minority status. So why must we be surprised? The PPP/C has made it clear, even before the declaration of the November 2011 elections, that it will not accept the wishes of the people. So rushing to the parliament to bully the courts into giving the PPP/C more members on the Select Committee is about the latest in a series of ‘political trickery and bullyism’ being employed by this current Jagdeo/Ramotar regime. For the benefit of those of us who might have forgotten when it all started, let me retrace the steps of the PPP/C before they reached to this ‘court action’.
You may recall that shortly before the declaration, of the actual elections results, there was a rush by the Chief Election Officer, Mr. Goocool Boodhoo, to declare that the PPP/C had won the elections by more than 50,000 votes. However, quick action by the opposition halted this move and Boodhoo could not carry through. Anyway, that hurdle was passed and we are with the rectified resulted which was declared as official and which also renders the PPP/C a minority government.
So how does the PPP/C intend to deal with this historic political reality of a majority opposition? From all indications the PPP/C does not intend to respect the wishes of the people and so since the declaration, it has been working overtime to attempt to further retard democracy, so the PPP/C employed a number of strategies to brainwash their supporters into calling for snap elections. By some strange reasoning they fathom that if the electorate rejected them in November 2011 that the people will foolishly forget their plight brought on by this inept PPP/C regime and surrender, now, their votes to them. How do they hope to achieve this? While the PPP/C media propagandists are earnestly at work, another wing of the PPP/C, we are told, is responsible for intensifying the fear and intimidation campaign in those PPP/C grassroots supporters and the rank and file Indo- Guyanese. So shortly after the elections it was reported that a certain minister of the government and team went into many Indo-Guyanese community and basically terrorize the people by telling them that, they were responsible for the government not getting 50 percent or more of the votes.
Then in the middle of January the said AG and a team of PPP/C propagandists planted themselves on state television (NCN) and basically issued threats to the Guyanese people and the parliamentary opposition when he, Nandalall made statements to the effect that; should the PPP/C budget not passed in the National Assembly the people might well be going back to the polls. So the budget is now being deliberately used as a means to scam us into some PPP/C ‘snap elections’ trap.
Just a few days ago no less a person that the President Liaison Officer, Kwame Mc Coy, wrote a letter in the Kaieteur News, to support the PPP/C snap elections orchestrated scam. Continuing to observe the series of events; in the Mirror Newspapers we read that the former contender for the PPP/C presidential candidate position, Mr. Ralph Ramkarran, has added his voice to the snap election call by again intimating that should the PPP/C budget not pass in the House, the people will have to vote again. So the budget has become the new ‘puppet on the string,’ which the PPP/C intends to use in order to force them to pass the PPP/C budget without question or scrutiny.
It is clear that the Office of the President has become the new bully pulpit and the budget has become the ‘bully item’. The PPP/C wants to wriggle out of their minority status so bad that they are prepared to use any means necessary to get their way. The role of the Parliamentary Opposition is to ensure that they do not succumb to the PPP/C bully tactic.
Guyanese would expect nothing less than the kind of scrutiny that we are seeing coming from the opposition. We remain hopeful that both parties will continue to demonstrate that the business of the people is taken seriously. For too long the PPP/C has used its majority to squander the resources of the people, and pilfer, with impunity, from the state. It is, therefore, time to put this lawlessness in check.
The Guyanese people will welcome the idea to get another chance to sweep the corrupt and incompetent PPP/C from executive and parliamentary power sooner rather than later but we will not be pressured into any snap elections when we do not trust those who manage GECOM. Like the OAS observer team, we all agree that GECOM needs overhauling and that the Constitutional Reform that we should have had since 2006 is badly needed now.
On second thought, does the PPP/C honestly believe that it can actually win, free and fairly, the majority of the peoples’ votes, in snap elections? I think not! So all this ‘labalaba’ about snap elections is nothing more than a deceptive ‘thought aloud’ intended to cause Guyanese to get into a frenzy and act irrationally, while the PPP/C concoct their major plot to take us off course. It is clear that the PPP/C is highly uncomfortable in their now role of parliamentary minority and they are bent on getting out of it. They therefore, are willing to try everything to achieve their objective.
This Court action is not the last, and we can except to see the attempt to create a state of emergency next. I urge every Guyanese to stay connected and in tune to the issue and do like the PPP/C, in their election theme song, begs us to do; ‘watch dem’.
Lurlene Nestor
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
Apr 19, 2024
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