Georgetown : A hydro project, new highways, a deep water harbour, Information Communication Technology Centres (ICT), economic free zones, a highly educated and skilled workforce, job creation and a better standard of living for all Guyanese should his Government be re-elected are some of the re-assurances given by Head of State, Donald Ramotar this evening to thousands of Guyanese at the Lusignan Tarmac as the race to the polls hit the finish line.
The President was at the time speaking at the final rally last evening hosted by the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPPC) before the 24-hour break from politicking ahead of the May 11 general and regional elections.
Supporters converged at the East Coast Demerara venue as the curtains came down on the elections campaign amidst jubilation and high anticipation of victory at Monday’s polls with encouragement from their Presidential Candidate Ramotar and Prime Ministerial Candidate Elisabeth Harper.
“I ask you to be brave, to be strong, and to go out early in the morning to vote, to put your x to the side of the cup. Over the years the PPP/C government and the PPP have stood by you, and I ask you on Monday to stand with us, to stand by me and let us deliver the biggest victory for the people of this country.”
Extending his personal and party’s gratitude, Ramotar thanked all the supporters, who stood with him for the past years.
“I’ve admired your strength and the tremendous achievements you have made because everywhere I go, I can see the marked improvement in people’s lives…You the people of this country performed magnificently, and I must congratulate you for that…The campaign was a hard fought campaign. We in the PPP/C, we campaigned on our record because we have a record that we can be proud of, we have a record of struggling for freedom and independence…and when independence came and our democracy was undermined and our freedom taken away, we fought relentlessly,” he said for restoration. “The fact that we can speak our mind freely we cannot ever put a price tag to that.”
He reminded supporters of the bleak economic situation in which Guyana was under the PNC and that then Minister of Finance, Carl Greenidge admitted in a signed affidavit that the country was bankrupt and the debt was 925 percent of the economy. “The PPP/C Government brought that down to only 60 percent of the economy.” The repayment figures are also a success story, as they came down from 153 percent of revenue to less than five percent of revenues today.
“We can see progress right around the country. Our children now over the last ten years have moved from being at the bottom of the ladder to over the past ten years, every single year Guyanese students topping the Caribbean as the best student in the Region,” he said. This success, he noted, is not confined to students of those schools regarded traditionally as the top performers, but from schools in rural communities, as the top technical student for the Caribbean last year came from Cotton Tree, West Berbice. “His achievement is the achievement of a child of the working class,” he said, noting that the PPP/C has always been a party of the working class. This, he said, vindicates government’s social spending thrust, which is unparalleled in the Caribbean. Guyana currently invests about 30 percent of its national budget on the social sectors, the bulk of which goes towards education delivery.
He said once re-elected, the government hopes to take Guyana to a developed country status within a short period by modernising the landscape and developing the capacity of the people. He spoke of the potential of the Amaila Falls Hydro Project that was started by the PPP/C, and which was consistently knocked down by the political situation, but government will start the project again before the end of the year once re-elected.
“We are going to modernise our country by creating the infrastructure we are putting in place, we will modernise Guyana…” a determined Ramotar assured his supporters. Key to this modernisation of which he speaks is the expansion of the Cheddi Jagan International Airport that will bring down freight cost and open overseas markets for Guyanese farmers and producers.
“The world will be our market,” he said, adding that the supporting road network will be built to reduce the time and cost for farmers from farm to market, thereby increasing their competitiveness.
“We are the party of continuous change. We have shown that in every situation we are able to grapple with…and now we are ready to move our country to higher (levels of) development,” he said. This development will include the creation of thousands of jobs through the hydro project, an ICT lab on the East Coast to employ more than 1000 persons and a new East Coast Highway.
These new ventures will not be at the expense of the traditional sectors, he promised, as “we will not neglect our traditional industries. We will ensure that sugar continues to make an important contribution to the economy of our country, and I have committed that the next PPP/C government will spend a minimum of $20 billion to ensure the industry prospers, and you know you can take our promise seriously…We built the university of Guyana. We built the Guyana School of Agriculture. We built the CPCE, and the Bank of Guyana,” he said.
The PPP/C Government improved transportation “and now we are bridging our rivers. We have bridged the Berbice River and are working to Bridge the Corentyne River as well. These projects will create thousands of jobs because it will all us to create economic free zones…all over the place we will have more and more centres for growth in our country.”
The President said that Guyana’s economy will be diversified and emphasised that Government “will continue to spend our money on the people of our country, to improve the capacity of Guyana because that is our philosophy that is where we come from. We believe that the economy must serve the people.”
His party has facilitated more working people owning their own homes and reduced the age for homeownership from more than 50 years to 34 years and raised the life expectancy significantly.
“When we came to office the average level (life expectancy) was 58 for men and 60 for women and today we have lifted that to almost 70…and in the next five years we intend to carry it to 75 years for our people…Our success in the economy has been translated into a better life for the people of Guyana,” he said adding that the Georgetown Hospital can now do heart surgeries and soon the speciality hospital that will be built by his Administration will take things further by offering organ transplant.
“Every promise we have kept, and I am proud of that record, but there is one danger in place. That danger comes from the Opposition, an opposition that is totally uninterested in the development of our country,” he said, noting that they have cut $89 billion from the budget over the last three years, but “despite their worst efforts to try to hold back the development of our country, we still remained the fastest growing economy in the Caribbean, and that is a remarkable development because they set out to deliberately harm our country.”
He told supporters that their non-cooperation was evident also in their stance on the Anti-Money Laundering Bill.
“They do not have a record they can stand on. Indeed it is very strange that they don’t want to talk about history because David Granger, by training, he’s a historian, he has a degree in history, but this is the only historian in the world who doesn’t want to talk about history for very good reasons because he cannot hold up the record of the PNC in government to us as an alternative. They cannot do it because they ruined our country…they wanted to tell you what you must eat. If you must eat flour, if you must eat peas…”
This is evident in that party changing its name at every recent elections and the PPP/C Government. He said his party has not only been fighting against the opposition political parties, but “we had to fight against the newspapers that support them”, adding that KN refused to carry a PPP/C ad with an APNU supporter urinating on the flag as it was too lewd, but that said paper has published the body of a decapitated man on its front page. “What kind of hypocrisy is this? But we know they don’t want us to expose the corruption,” he said, which include Moses Nagamootoo being paid by NICIL (National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited) for consultancy work during the Berbice River Bridge construction and still seeking payment from people who were living at the riverside and (Khemraj) Ramjattan being associated with the contractors of the planned Specialty Hospital.
They have been bombarding the psychology of the Indian population in the country, through their ads, but the Kaieteur News carried those ads, he said. President Ramotar was referring to East Indians being used by the Coalition to wow support in their favour. “Every single Guyana whether Indo, African, Amerindian Guyanese or others, they have every right to vote for the PPP/C because it was the PPP/C policies in government that transformed their lives…,” he said, noting that “we are happy that we have so many observers in the country because as old dog don’t stop sucking eggs and the PNC is the same APNU,” he said, who are culpable of stealing ballots.
He also spoke of the right to vote, a battle in which the PPP/C was at the forefront, and urged the gathering to remember the ballot box martyrs who made sacrifices to ensure free and fair elections.
Making his final call for support for a return to the Presidency and a majority in the National Assembly for his Party, President Ramotar said, “We are proud of our achievement. Comrades we have stood by you. These elections are important elections. We remember another coalition in 1964 and where it brought our country to,” adding that this current coalition seeks power over development as they decided on political positions before discussing policies to take Guyana forward.
Speaking about the opposition leadership, Ramotar noted it’s less than credible, as he observed that Granger has assured Barticians that there will be no more massacres, but pointed out it was the PNC’s founder leader Forbes Burnham that said “Only he owns the dog can call off the dogs. So is Granger in the statement he is making, is he admitting that he’s in control of the dogs? Can he call them off when he wants to do so? Comrades this is the frightening implication.”
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