“AFC in for a rude awakening” – Jagdeo

Former President Bharrat Jagdeo on Sunday rolled back the years to when he was on the campaign trail, delivering a stinging speech at the ceremony to mark the 18th death anniversary of the founding leader of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), Dr Cheddi Jagan, at the Babu Jaan crematorium, Port Mourant, Corentyne, Berbice.

Amid thunderous rounds of applause and rousing chants, the crematorium site was transformed into a sea of enthusiasm, as the former Guyanese leader delivered from the stage. His call was in no way different from the line-up of speakers at the event, who all sought to inspire the thousands gathered, to “re-elect the PPP/C to office so that it could continue the progress of the country”.

Back in February, saying that APNU will easily win 40 per cent of the votes at the upcoming elections, Prime Ministerial Candidate of the APNU-AFC coalition, Moses Nagamootoo, told a gathering at New Amsterdam that the AFC could give the David Granger-led coalition the other 11 per cent votes it needs to clinch a majority.

At the last elections, the AFC under an Indian Guyanese leader, Khemraj Ramjattan, won 10.3 per cent of the votes mainly from Indian-dominated Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne).

In 2006, the AFC had secured a similar percentage of votes but under the leadership of Raphael Trotman, most had come from the APNU African-dominated constituency. Conceding that the AFC cannot compare itself with APNU in terms of electoral strength, Nagamootoo – who was hand-selected as Presidential Candidate by AFC’s Leader, Khemraj Ramjattan – said an electoral alliance was the way to go.

Nagamootoo was deliberately selected by Ramjattan who arbitrarily jettisoned the “presidential candidate rotation principle” to select the Indian Guyanese AFC Vice Chairman, Moses Nagamootoo, over the Chairman, Nigel Hughes.

All must benefit

Meanwhile, Jagdeo, who was quite jubilant in his delivery, pointed out to the massive crowd of Guyanese from various racial and cultural backgrounds, that the founding leader, Dr Jagan, would have carried out his functions in a much similar way to that of the current administration. Dr Jagan, considered the “father of the nation”, passed away on March 6, 1997 at the Walter Reed Medical Centre, Washington DC, after suffering a serious heart attack some three weeks earlier.

“We come from a philosophy where Cheddi Jagan believed in ensuring that the PPP/C remains in and above the fray. People’s gender, religion, and race don’t matter to us. If you are part of the PPP family, we embrace you because we believe that this country will change when only all the people benefit and we have no apology for that,” Jagdeo said firmly, above a booming response from the crowd. He said the founding leader’s vision for Guyana remained strong.

“A country living with all of its people living together, a country that is prospering, where every child gets the best education, where the young people could go out to have the best education and find a job. Where people could have an increase in leisure, where our economy is expanding, where people have more rights, where they can feel dignified and safe in their homes. This is the vision of Guyana that we are all working towards. So we need soldiers to make that vision a reality and the soldiers here have to first of all ensure that on May 11, we win this one overwhelmingly,” Jagdeo, a global climate change campaigner, said.

Opposition blasts

But what attracted a more thrilling reaction was the former President’s lambasting of the Opposition, AFC and APNU, who in their bid to oust the current administration, signed the “Cummingsburg Accord”, a move that he related will be to the greatest disadvantage of the AFC.  He described as “naïve and desperate”, the move by the junior political Opposition party to join forces with the People’s National Congress  Reform-dominated APNU and its leader David Granger, whom he said still strongly embraced the Burnhamite philosophies of the age-old political unit.

“It must be naivety and desperation on the part of the AFC to link up with APNU, because they have betrayed all those people who were misled to believe that Ramjattan and Nagamootoo really cared about them. They care for themselves. They have secured Vice President and the Prime Ministerial positions for themselves”.

Rude awakening

Jagdeo promised that the AFC was in for a “rude awakening”, and would suffer a similar fate to that of The United Force (UF). “They are so naïve …. When the leader of the list decides who goes to Parliament, they are going to be getting a rude awakening. The UF had it in the past and they will have it because they don’t have any leverage anymore, there is no more AFC after nomination. There is PNC, one ticket… Don’t worry about the name AFC-APNU; there is one name, one list of candidates and one head of list,” Jagdeo related, continuing that if the party is thrown out of the coalition, “they can’t do anything about it because they have no leverage. It is naivety and ambition; blind ambition that caused them to even ignore sensibility,” the former President declared.

Jagdeo said the move by the parties, seeking out “change”, was nothing more than “a rhetorical gyaff”, as the incumbent has been doing for Guyanese what they never dreamt to experience during the years of the PNC rule. “When we talk change, it’s not just about slogans, we are talking about reality. We’re talking about more call centres for young people and a better quality of education. In the past ten years, more students have had scholarships than the entire era. When we have had 122 doctors, now we have close to 1000 doctors qualified. There is no money shortage to buy drugs; we would have problems with sometimes distribution, but not money shortage,” Jagdeo declared.

Stymie progress

He said the parties have been consistent in their bid to stymie progress since every plan put forward by Government was voted down by the parties with their combined one-seat majority. Describing the President as a democratic man, Jagdeo said “sometimes you have to administer something else… because we allow them to frustrate and they use their one-seat majority to frustrate every head,” the former President said, reiterating that close to Gy$90 billion had been cut from the budget over the last three years – funds he argued that could have gone to “help the people of this country”. More importantly, Jagdeo related, was that ‘they said we are going to “bring down this government, take away two years from them”. According to him, that is what the AFC wanted.

“So twice it has happened in our history that these people have been allowed to take away two years from us. First in the Herdmanston Accord and now in the Cummingsburg Accord, they have taken away another two years from us.”

He continued that the progress made under the current administration has even caused some 48,000 of the 51,000 Guyanese to return to their homeland although they were awarded visas by the US Embassy here. “And I am thinking we did a great thing for Guyana, because in the past nobody would have come back, but because of this government and the changes here, people don’t want to stay there, they spend holiday and they come back.  We have insulated our economy, we have made it strong – we have had continued growth over the last seven years; we are doing well inspite of the global recession,” Jagdeo said.