Promise delivered’ is the catchphrase being used by the APNU+AFC Coalition Government on social media sites as it continues to claim some measure of success after over four years in office, according to Opposition Leader, Bharrat Jagdeo.
However, during his Thursday (June 13, 2019) news conference, he noted that the success is so non-existent that the Coalition has resorted to ‘lifting’ images from other online publications and rebranding it as its own – to show ‘success’. He referred to one case where the Coalition claimed that a promise was delivered to “provide better access to potable water and improved sanitation to all Guyanese” and a photograph used by an online blog was used to bolster this claim.
In a second case, he pointed out that the Coalition claimed that a promise was delivered relative to “creating jobs in the oil and gas industry” and a photograph used by a foreign YouTube page was inserted to validate this claim. As recent as last month, the Opposition Leader noted that the APNU+AFC Coalition continues to boasted of major significant feats, when the reality has been four years of failures and broken promises.
He charged that the declarations made by the coalition administration of its successes during its tenure in office is far from the truth. “There are multiple lies to Guyanese about its long list or achievements. When the average Guyanese tries matching those with the reality of life on the ground, they find a huge gap,” he said.
According to Jagdeo, the Government has failed in attracting major new investments in Guyana and even local investments, if any, are limited and flailing in the country. “Outside of the oil and gas sector which started under the [People’s Progressive Party] PPP, the investments have dried up totally, foreign investments, and local investment is almost non-existent now.
The only thing that a few people are benefiting from are the high prices for land in prime locations where the oil companies want to locate one or two of their facilities. That is the only thing that is happening, foreign investment as well as local investment have dried up…”
The Opposition Leader pointed out that while much focus is being placed on the oil and gas sector in relation to job opportunities for citizens, the employment opportunities will be limited, and cannot substitute for the jobs that were lost due to Government over the past four years. “The prospect of creating new jobs is diminished because oil and gas as I said before will give us 2,000 new jobs and we lost 30,000 jobs and we are not going to create many new jobs in the other sectors so it is going to get progressively worse… four years of deterioration… only four years in office is not an excuse. How much longer does it take to recognised that this Government does not have a vision?”
He added that the current Administration has an “absence of direction” and that contrary to the declarations of achievements by the APNU/AFC from 2015 to date, the past four years have been nothing short of failures and deterioration of progress in Guyana.