Guyana’s 2015 Election Campaign: The Intellectual Pygmy and the Charlatan

Dear Editor, Now that Guyana’s regional and general election campaign season is in full swing, the country is once again blessed or cursed, depending on your point of view, of having one of the country’s most polarizing figures, former president Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo, fulminate about the evils of the opposition seeking to displace the corrupt, incompetent and lawless PPP government. I’m on record as saying that Donald Ramotar as a leader is out of his depth and hearing him speak confirms that he was hand-picked to be president precisely because of his leadership deficits and malleability by former president Bharrat Jagdeo. From day one Ramotar was never his own man when he adopted Bharrat Jagdeo’s entire cabinet of ministers as his own. Mr. Ramotar owns all of Bharrat Jagdeo’s failures, lock stock and barrel. Likewise, Mr. Jagdeo has a vested interest in not letting the opposition replace the PPP, because when that happens, it is likely that Mr. Jagdeo and many of his cronies will have a lot to answer for in a court of law. It is sad to see the levels to which Guyana’s political discourse has devolved since Bharrat Jagdeo cloaked himself in hubris, and with each passing day, behaves in a manner that is beneath the dignity of the office of president and is simply nothing more than a race baiting charlatan. Bharrat Jagdeo is a farce, wrapped in fraud inside a hollow sham who misled the nation into believing he was legally married and we all know how that turned out. He is the same person who claimed to have tapes of criminals committing all manner of acts but never turned over said tapes to his police force for prosecution. His latest insinuation about knowing who the perpetrators are in the assassination of Guyana’s most recent patriot, Mr. Courtney Crum-Ewing, fits the pattern of his ability to dissemble without consequences in the name of fomenting racial animus. The PPP wants Guyanese to suspend logic and make believe that the dystopian society that currently exists is the opposition’s doing, even though the PPP has led Guyana for almost twenty-three unbroken years. State condoned/sponsored torture of its citizens at the hands of the police, unchecked narco-trafficking, money laundering as a parallel economy accounting for more than 25% of the official economy, endemic corruption, nepotism, marginalization, institutionalized racism, mistreatment of Amerindians, rampant crime, failure of the sugar industry are just a few on an exhaustive list that the PPP has presided over. Worst of all, after twenty-three years, the PPP still cannot deliver reliable electricity, a basic utility and a major driver of economic productivity and prosperity. The time has long passed for the PPP to be shown the door and made to give account in a court of law for all the atrocities they’ve committed either by omission or by commission. It is time. It is time for forensic audits. It is time for justice. It is time to vote based on issues and not race. Nigel Jason