Make sure you vote early today for the candidate you think will serve your community best

Dear Editor VOTING is the single most important duty in public life, and we should not take the opportunity to do so lightly. Before 2020, it was difficult to fully convey to younger people in this country how decades of rigged elections had snuffed out this most elemental right of citizenship.

Regrettably, it took a five-month mega rigging effort to introduce young Guyanese to the culture of election-thievery of the PNC-led APNU, and their little brother, the AFC. Today, June 12, 2023, is the perfect opportunity to teach the APNU a lesson for attempted election heist by voting for the PPP/C and their constituency candidates.

The APNU offers Guy- anese extraordinarily little, other than empty promises. APNU promises are never for the whole country. No, never. They are always about their own supporters. But even here, the APNU is so incompetent that they cannot deliver the goods to the people who do support them.

The party’s brass is too busy helping themselves to waterfront lands and other choice places like Millies Hideout in Linden where the ‘Chief Election Rigger’ got more than a hundred acres of land.

Here is a Kaieteur News (July 2, 2020) – “The APNU/AFC Government has come under severe fire for what some say was a “mad rush” to allocate prime State lands to key officials and alleged supporters of the coalition since the December

2018 no-confidence vote –the period after which the administration should have been in a caretaker status until a new government was elected.”

Kaieteur News also reported that “Mr. Lowenfield as our Chief Elections Officer, after the passage of the no-confidence vote…, became the beneficiary from the government that had fallen, of two acres of prime residential land in a village called Mocha, and 100-plus acres of land at a place in Region Ten called Millie’s Hideout…” (KN, 7/2/2020).

The APNU’s little campaign for the 2023 LGEs has been based on three things, namely, (1) Afro-Guyanese votes belong to them like private property; (2) Georgetown City Council has been starved of funds; and their trump card; (3) bad talk President Ali and Vice-President Jagdeo.

Regarding number one, we have seen that hundreds upon hundreds of traditional supporters of PNC-APNU forcefully reject the personal-ownership rhetoric.

The complaint that Georgetown has been starved by the Central Government for resources is a plain lie. The Minister of Finance, Ashni Singh, reported a few days ago that the City Council has received in excess of $10 billion dollars from the PPP/C led Government. This includes $678 million for drainage; $600 million for water; $510 million for Solid Waste Management; and $779 million to renovate a City Hall occupied by the PNC for more than five decades.

Minister Singh also raised the alarm about the PNC-controlled M&CC which took in $1.7 billion in (PAYE) taxes but did not remit to GRA as required by law; and that the PNC outfit owes $387 million in workers’ NIS contributions.

Finally, since the PPP/C has a robust policy agenda and there is little room for criticism, the APNU’s main line of attack is to attack President Irfaan Ali, and Vice-President Jagdeo. These swipes against Ali and Jagdeo have been met with quick dismissals, scorn, and even laughter.

At a public meeting at Success (ECD) last night, Jagdeo brought the audience to sustained laughter when he said that this is not a contest between crappos, but a contest between political parties.

Some senior APNU people have been calling the PPP/C ‘Trench Crappos’ because the PPP/C has been ‘swimming into their strongholds.’ In a lighter moment Jagdeo intimated that if the PPP/C are ‘Trench Crappos’ then APNU are ‘House Crappos.’ And further “if this is a contest between Crappos, then the ‘House Crappos’ will win that contest. Better at croaking, no doubt.

Jokes aside, it is tremendously important for citizens to go out early and vote for the candidates of their choice. From what I can see, the PPP/C will create a massive Red Wave across the country.

Sincerely,

Dr. Randolph (Randy) Persaud