Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Dec 07, 2014 APNU Column, Features / Columnists
The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) is desperate. Donald Ramotar’s troubled, three-year presidency has been a governmental catastrophe. The PPP’s provocative prorogation of parliament has dissolved in disaster. Its performance in the National Assembly has been an ignominious car crash. Its web of flawed financing for flaky mega projects is unravelling. Confidence in certain senior ministers has been eroded. High rates of crime, corruption and unprecedented public criticism have taken their toll on the nation. Tolerance for an arrogant and overbearing administration is evaporating.
At a time when prudence and discretion are needed, the PPP has recklessly launched its dirtiest most divisive and dangerous campaign ever as general and regional elections approach. The Party’s General Secretary and its apparent elections campaign manager – Clement Rohee – has been in the forefront of the controversial campaign. He has been issuing ludicrous but libelous attacks on opposition leaders and political parties and doing everything possible to deepen disdain for what has now become a ‘lame-duck’ government.
The PPP’s general elections campaign started several months ago. Rohee, speaking at the annual commemoration at Babu John on 9th March, said that people were growing restless and uncomfortable politically and “only general elections can change the situation.” The PPP, for most of the year since then, has been deliberately fomenting constitutional crises in order to justify its decision to return to the polls to seek a new mandate from the electorate, to vilify the opposition and to divert attention from its own sordid record of corruption and mismanagement.
The PPP, meanwhile, has been preventing the holding of local government elections while preparing for general and regional elections. Rohee has been conceited in the extreme boasting that his Party was “as confident as confident can be” and that, when there is a move to general elections, the PPP will emerge easily with a majority.” The PPP intends to win at all costs and by any means necessary, even by indulging in fear-mongering, race-baiting, vote-buying and lying.
The PPP’s scurrilous press statement dated 26th November is one of the most obscene and outrageous to have ever been issued by a political party. The PPP, referring to Opposition MPs by name, stated plainly: “Both Mr. Granger and Mr. Greenidge…would unleash vengeance against anyone they perceive to be associated with the PPP and the PPP/C administration…these threats can only be seen as tantamount to the Demerara River flowing red with blood should the APNU and PNC come to power.”
Rohee said earlier that “it is a well-established fact that the opposition parties have links with criminal elements in our society” and that they have used these criminal elements in the past, and in more recent times, “to create mayhem in the country.” Such irresponsible statements are calculated to breed fear by threatening a ‘blood bath’ and to “create mayhem” if APNU were to win the next election.
The PPP has been publishing inflammatory, racist statements in order to influence the attitudes and behaviour of ethnic groups, especially of Amerindians and persons of Indian origin. The PPP, on 1st December, falsely claimed that the indigenous population had been “battered” under the PNC regime and that the Opposition was “attempting to disenfranchise the Amerindians. The PPP maliciously accused the PNC of being “bent on marginalising the indigenous population.” This, of course, was a lie.
In fact, it is the PPP which has been accused by the Alliance For Change (AFC) of creating “…ethnic and geographic apartheid in Guyana” and of “…stirring anti-African fears, conjuring up the so-called ‘black jumbie’ to scare Indians and to woo them away from the AFC.”
Rohee, in a thinly-veiled racial threat, warned the AFC that Berbicians were never really supporters of the AFC. They are, he said, “the prodigal sons and daughters of the PPP.” The PPP is playing a dangerous game by resorting to racial issues in a multi-racial society.
The PPP has been unfairly spending state resources in certain targeted communities in order to win their votes at the forthcoming elections. Several Ministers have been spending state funds at a phenomenal rate in order to “buy” votes. The Minister of Local Government and Regional Development unilaterally launched a multi-million-dollar ‘clean-up-my-country’ programme. The Minister of Amerindian Affairs has been presenting villages with school uniform material. The Minister of Education waited over six months to start disbursing the $10,000 grant promised to the families of schoolchildren. The Prime Minister and junior Finance Minister have been lavishing netbooks (laptop computers) on several rural communities.
The PPP lied when it described Shaquille Grant, who was killed by the Police, as a “criminal.” This was an infantile attempt by the author of that lie to show that the Leader of the Opposition was “in bed with the criminal underworld.” The PPP was forced earlier this week to apologise to Ms. Shonette Adams, the boy’s mother, for that malicious lie. The PPP statement mendaciously went on to claim that “Mr. Granger indicated he will go on a ‘witch hunt’ and through his ‘lynch mob,’ would throw due process out the window.” This is a damned lie ¯ a fabrication that was concocted by a sick mind.
The People’s Progressive Party campaign, led by Clement Rohee, is playing with fire. Its lies, inflammatory language and racial incitement have started to cause fear and to stoke the flames of racial hatred. The PPP and its General Secretary must bear responsibility for the consequences of these reckless statements and ferocious behaviour.
Where is the BETTER MANAGEMENT/RENEGOTIATION OF THE OIL CONTRACTS you promised Jagdeo?
Apr 19, 2024
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