Latest update April 18th, 2024 12:59 AM
Sep 09, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
Kaieteur News – David Hinds, who is associated with the remains of the Working People’s Alliance, once gave a brutal but frank assessment of the APNU+AFC first three years in office. He is quoted by the Stabroek News of 21st May, 2018 accusing his own Coalition government of being visionless and with few tangible achievements.
He said, “Just three short years later, our country has lost hope again. The government that came to power with such mammoth goodwill has turned out to be the most unimaginative since independence.”
The WPA further accused the APNU+AFC government of not giving Guyana anything big or transformative. He noted that it was stumbling from one political error to the next and of governing like a one-party government.
It is not clear whether he had advance notice that Charandass Persaud would vote in support of the no-confidence motion. But after the passage of that motion, he called on the APNU+AFC to apologise to its supporters for betraying their trust.
But even if the APNU+AFC government did not feel the need to apologise to its supporters, it certainly should do so now, given what it attempted to do following the general and regional elections of 2nd March, 2022.
The APNU+AFC created tremendous hardships as a result of its actions which triggered a five-month long electoral impasse. The country was shut down, in part because of COVID-19, but also as a result of the failure to conclude the elections. At a time of great suffering of the people, the government had little support to offer the people because it was entangled in a bid to remain in office despite the expressed will of the people.
All Guyana suffered, including the supporters of the APNU+AFC. Many of them could not enjoy the brace which they needed to maintain themselves and families because no Budget could be passed as the country moved from one drama to the next.
This affected the national response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Testing levels were extremely low and there was mandatory isolation. Millions were spent in repurposing a hotel into a COVID-19 hospital. But when the PPP/C took office, it described the institution as having only bare-bones equipment and facilities. One mother spent more than 52 days in isolation and was forced to take to social media to highlight her frustration. The need for resources to fight the pandemic was hindered by the plot to rig the elections.
The election impasse was a source of great embarrassment to the supporters of the APNU+AFC. Their country and parties were shamed in the eyes of the international community and the fingers were pointing at the APNU+AFC as being responsible for the failure to declare the results of the elections, five months after the close of polls. One former Prime Minister of a Caribbean country said he had never witnessed a more transparent attempt to alter the result of an election.
The supporters of the APNU+AFC were fed a diet of ludicrous narratives. First, they were told that the Coalition’s statement of polls showed that it had won the elections. But they were and have never been shown these statements of polls. This was insult to the intelligence of the Guyanese people. Then they were promised that the results of the Recount would confirm the APNU+AFC victory. It did not.
The supporters were asked to stomach the narrative that dead and migrant persons voted en masse and right under the noses of the APNU+AFC’s polling agents that were present in every polling station. They were also told that Russians came to Guyana to rig the elections and that the Voters’ List was bloated.
The APNU+AFC said that dead and migrant persons voted. It gave a list of names. The media went out and found most of the persons which the APNU+AFC claimed were dead or migrated and who had voted.
Then the country was told that the PPP/C government was installed at the behest of the western powers. This was a further insult to the intelligence of the Guyanese people because why would the western powers then only give the PPP/C a one-seat majority. Surely, if it had the powers to install a government it would have given it a far greater majority.
As much as the supporters of the APNU+AFC would want nothing more than to have seen the Coalition return to office, they would not have condoned a return through dishonest means.
The APNU+AFC is still together but for how long nobody knows. It has accepted the seats which it was allotted in the National Assembly. It is not too late for the Coalition to offer an unconditional apology for the shame, disgrace, embarrassment which it caused its supporters and the lies which it peddled.
Unless it does so, it will find itself being rejected by the people. This is a different time and different era. The people have experienced the best and the bad of both the PPP/C and the APNU+AFC and they no longer fear PPP/C rule as much after having seen what the APNU+AFC did during its five-year tenure.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)
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