Especially since most of the leaders and active leading members of the PNC are the same faces from the dictatorship?

With the exception of Granger, I don't know which Burnhamite PNC official I trust.

I can accept the PNC as a different institution when the actors who brought us beat/kill coolie as a political strategy are dead or exiled permanently from the party.

Well you do have to believe in the goodness of people.

Granger has been able to keep out the most militant from the PNC.

PNC has become much tamer.  Street protests is not a first option.

The 21st century context does not lend itself to the old food shortages and closed economy practices of 3 decades ago.  Those are irrational fears.

In the same way we fear the old PNC, why don't we fear the current PPP who will steal the kitchen sink if you don't look?

The PPP are old communist turned crony capitalists. What prevented the PPP from taking the road to righteousness, the one thick beset with thorns and briars, is their greed and need for easy street. 

The PPP have out performed the PNC of old on every metric. They have stolen more. The PNC never created private elite enclaves to service their own. There were no PNC pradovilles. None of them became millionaires as evidenced by those that remain who are still scrounging. Everyone of these PPP church mice are now fat cat patricians. Even the recent ministers!

The PNC had brute force enforcement. As one international scholar noted, comparing from among the dictators of the era from Pinochet to the Perons, under whose watch thousands disappeared, we had a rather bloodless dictatorial reign.

The PPP on the other hand felt they cannot control lawlessness by conventional means so they employed a drug lord to do their killing. At the end of it four hundred or more were dead and that is on their head. If the police and the conventional law enforcement were used and not extrajudicial means they could have claimed they acted within the law. Presently they still deny they killed those people.

Under the PNC none of us know what a reefer was. All we ever heard of ganja was from a folk song. Not, there are junkies everywhere and the stream of drugs through the nation has sprout a bumper crop of stick em up boys and hired killers.

I keep hearing that this is still prevalent in Guyana. How come the 21st context which does not lend itself to this is still lending itself to it?

All that you wrote here debunks the argument that the elements in existence today can prevent the PNC from returning to their old ways. Back in the Burnham days, we had to work from Monday to Saturday and then he demanded that wake up early Sunday morning to go to his Hope estate to watch him ride his horse and demean people. There is no guarantee that today's PNC don't have another Burnham lurching in the shadows. Do people nowadays have to 'worship' Ramoutar like they had to Burnham? 

There was ganja when I lived in Guyana. Mikey and Clarkie who used to fix my bike used to smoke ganja in bright daylight.

In politics, we like to believe that only those we support will not reduce themselves to others. When I used to visit Home Affairs Ministry, Corbin used to 'beg' you for money. Make sure you don't say no.

People are still on the edge because they do not get the right distribution of nutritional requirements. One cannot eat dhal and bagie or casava bread and casareep daily. There must be the right spread of the five food groups. The lack of such is due to prices, poverty of information, failure to develop a diverse cosine, the pervasive introduction of a fast food culture among other things. The 21 century in the developing west is lagging behind by assuming bad habits most developed nations are leaving behind.

The old ways do not exist even in the PPP. The PPP has cover because they foster crony capitalism, have foux news papers etc. and take cover in the vestiges of democracy even though their panties are the dictators constitution.

There are no sainted leaders as in the past. There is no poverty of intellect as before, there is no global condition as the cold war to harden "sides" where the large powers can ignore dictators in their backyards because they are their dictators.  The Past cannot come. Crony capitalists in the APNU can come. It is inevitable if there is no constitutional change that is why one demands they make the necessary promises the PPP ignores.

So you feel that the opposition can provide better opportunities for prosperity than the PPP? If so, what evidence do we have that they can?

The PPP are crooks with no desire for change. Those coming in promise many things the PPP are averse to, constitutional changes, procurement commission, active devolved local government, cessation of export of unprocessed lumber among other things. They show a reluctance to let the chinese get our fishing grounds. Those are all things that mean something above and beyond the stasis promised by the PPP and its corrupt culture.

Exactly. Change should not be for the sake of change. The parties vying for the top job has to demonstrate that they can. So far just criticizing the PPP and pretending that people are not better off today than they were before is a non-starter.

While those can make as many promises as time will afford them, the PPP has spent the past two decades bring Guyana back from the dead. They may be crooked but they still do well for the country. Sure there are crimes there but there is crimes right here in paradise. When the combined opposition decide to resurrect the old PNC 1001 vice-presidents, I became convinced that the only thing that has changed over the past three decades has been their names. In short, I am not buying their promises.

Here we go again benchmarking progress in comparison to the Burnham days.

As long as we are slightly better, it's OK.  That's not good enough.

Under the PPP there has ben some growth.  Growth is not the same as development.  We just can't measure inputs, we have to look at outcomes.

The Coalition will attract new talent.  There will be new brighter faces in the Cabinet, and not square pegs such as Manick, Burkett, Sukhai, Whittaker, etc.

Ok then. Forget the Burnham days. Just benchmark it against the day before. There has been continuous development in Guyana which is still going on today. Now are you trying to benchmark it with the United States? How do you suggest the opposition will accomplish that? 

I do not care what you buy or not. I am not here to convert you with your incapacity to look beyond the present crooks.

there is no more Cold War . . . the 20th Century dynamics that created the Communist PPP and the (eventually) Communist PNC are no more

all we have left is tribe and the promise of true democracy

the party (PPP) holding the majority tribe's vote is the only player that benefits from entrenched division

minority parties PNC and AFC need to make compromises and move away from tribalism to be successful

we need to stop averting our eyes from that blinding fact! and stop playing the fool pretending that the race card is being played equally by the PPP and [even more?] by the PNC just so supporters of the status quo can walk away with comfort saying 'a pox on both their houses'

cui bono?

They kinda lost me somewhere between the Third and Fifth Vice Presidency  too

This Coalition is about some ambitious Jaganite coolies who wank Cabinet wuk right now instead of wait lil bit moh.

Nagamootoo ain't gettin younger so he did what was best fuh Nagamootoo.

Maybe I am actually looking farther.

Sorry, you do not get to jump is these cooks have you by the ankles.