Repeatedly linking the PNCR to criminals, PPP/C officials including President Donald Ramotar told Barticians yesterday that the opposition has been the greatest hindrance to development in the country and warned of the creation of a “militarised” state should it get into power.

In what was the incumbent’s smallest crowd for any of its major rallies in recent years, the PPP/C team, which also included Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, Minister of Public Works Robeson Benn, and Minister of Public Service Jennifer Westford, spoke to a few hundred persons scattered across First Avenue, Bartica.

A significant number of these persons were brought from surrounding Amerindian communities and also included children. In advertisements, the PPP/C had said that its Prime Ministerial candidate Elisabeth Harper was going to be present but she was not. Westford announced that Harper was “out on official duties” overseas.

PPP General Secretary Clement Rohee was present but though listed on the programme to speak, he did not.

Children lead a march of PPP/C supporters at First Avenue, Bartica, where the incumbent held a rally yesterday with the smallest crowd for any of its major campaign rallies in recent years.

It was left to Benn and Ramotar to take the PPP/C’s message to the crowd and they focused on the past of the PNCR–which is now part of APNU–and the opposition’s actions in the last Parliament. They also repeatedly sought to link the PNCR to criminals and highlighted the ex-military and police officers in the APNU+AFC alliance.

Benn said the opposition will come to Bartica and say that they have the crew that will build Guyana. He highlighted that the alliance’s presidential candidate David Granger and alliance member Joseph Harmon have a military background, while alliance member Winston Felix was a former Commissioner of Police.

“It looks like we have a legionnaires club of old military people who want to establish a de facto militarised country again here in Guyana,” Benn said and emphasised that they are warning people against this development. He said they “must take warning that we have to keep these people out if we want to continue on the path of development and progress.”

Benn also highlighted the criminal activities during the 2002 to 2008 crime wave and suggested that the opposition was consorting with bandits and sought to link them to the Lusignan and Bartica massacres. “The same bullet and the same gun—some of them the army gave to the PNC in their day—reappeared for those killings,” he said. “Take warning,” he urged.