LGE 2018: Massive wins for PPP countrywide

Despite some challenges at some Local Authority Areas (LAAs), People’s Progressive Party (PPP) General Secretary Bharrat Jagdeo said on Tuesday his party still managed to prevail during the 2018 Local Government Elections (LGE), securing massive wins countrywide with more than 45,000 votes than the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and the Alliance For Change (AFC) combined.
Speaking at the Party’s headquarters at Freedom House, Jagdeo said he is very happy with the results in spite of the many efforts by the APNU/AFC Administration to prevent the Party from making inroads in certain areas, as he berated the AFC for the “crushing defeat” it suffered at this year’s Local Government polls.
Jagdeo pointed out that there is a huge margin between the number of votes cast in favour of the PPP/C as against the APNU and its smaller coalition partner, the AFC. He explained that based on the results thus far, the PPP/C has over 54,000 votes more than the APNU and over 113,000 more votes than the AFC.
Jagdeo said too that his party’s performance is good based on all the challenges that it faced in relation to the issues he described as gerrymandering via the changes made to LAAs.
“They merged big PPP areas just to change the outcome of the NDC but with this massive PR turnout that we have had, in spite of the attempt to gerrymander the boundaries, the PPP will still have the majority of votes,” he outlined.
Taking 5 towns
The PPP/C General Secretary further said his Party ran a good campaign and will stick to the promises made to the residents for those areas that they won. Based upon the Party’s findings, the results showed wins in five different townships and areas that were not won before by that party.
At the 2016 Local Government Elections, which was the first in 22 years, the PPP/Civic won only three out of the nine towns across the country but according the PPP/C General Secretary, the Party made significant inroads, taking five of the 10 towns. These, he noted, were Mabaruma, Anna Regina, Rose Hall, Corriverton and Lethem – the latter of which the APNU/AFC had won at the last elections.
In Lethem, he said the PPP secured three out of the five seats; APNU, two, and AFC none; while in Mabaruma, the PPP got eight out of 12 seats, whereas it tied with the coalition the last time around. With a 30 per cent voter turnout in the city for this year’s elections, the Party also saw candidates winning in Georgetown constituencies.
“In the 2016 elections we did not win a single constituency out of the 15. Now the PPP has won three of the constituencies in Georgetown and now we have secured 4 PR (Proportional Representation) seats so we now have seven seats in Georgetown up from two. That is a massive gain in the city,” he declared.
He however conceded that the party has to do more groundwork to gain additional support in APNU strongholds such as New Amsterdam, Mahdia and Linden, but he nevertheless praised supporters for the PPP gaining a seat in the mining town for the first time. At the same time, Jagdeo feels the AFC should be ashamed of its performance, especially since the smaller coalition partner suffered a loss in the Whim/Bloomfield area, where Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo originates.
“The AFC in the Whim area seems to be called the All-Family Cabal. Mavis Nagamootoo contested and got 31 votes versus our candidate 216 and Abraham Nagamootoo, the nephew, got 17 versus 213 for our candidate in that Constituency. In fact he had to get 20 backers,” Jagdeo noted.
He observed that PPP’s wins occurred even though many senior operatives of the AFC were campaigning in the area on several occasions.
“The whole AFC leadership meeting in Whim almost twice and this is the result of it – a crushing defeat; unbelievable crushing defeat; shameful and they were saying that we were scared in the area… I wonder what they must be saying in the AFC camp and they got less than a 1000 votes in Berbice.
Jagdeo highlighted that the PPP also won the Buxton/Foulis Neighbourhood Democratic Council for the first time. The next Local Government polls are due in 2021.