Electorate tired of same old promises, faces
…change in the making – Ramkarran
Former People’s Progressive Party stalwart, Ralph Ramkarran has predicted that the electorate will most likely vote that party out of office as Guyanese have “grown tired of the same promises and the same faces.”
Ramkarran said this in his weekly column published on his website conversationtree.gy.
Former PPP stalwart, Ralph Ramkarran
The former Speaker of the National Assembly said that the PPP is heading to the May 11 polls with a disadvantage. He said, however, that the incumbent party could have been facing the electorate under completely different circumstances but as it displayed a lack of foresight, “it sat back and allowed its opponents(A Partnership for National Unity and Alliance for Change) to unite, rather than keeping them competing for influence, as they had been doing after the (2011) elections.”
He said that as a result of the PPP’s complete lack of foresight, the APNU+AFC political alliance is now a threatening force to the PPP’s hold on political power.
Ramkarran said that if the PPP had established an early coalition government with APNU after being reduced to a plurality in 2011, the electorate would have been asked at these elections to return a PPP+APNU to office as opposed to vote in an APNU+AFC alliance.
The former PPP stalwart said, “We could have been in a transformative era in Guyana’s politics in accordance with Cheddi Jagan’s legacy. It is the AFC which is now claiming this mantle. True or not, this claim will resonate during the campaign aided by an APNU+AFC campaign strategy of offering change, reform and renewal, which is always an attractive strategy when facing an incumbent in office for 22 years.”
Further, Ramkarran noted that both the government and the electorate have succumbed to the fatigue generated by the incumbency. He said that the government has lost the capacity to be innovative and the electorate has grown tired of the same promises and the same faces.
Ramkarran, who resigned from the PPP in 2012 reportedly over corruption issues, said that the Party has been on the “back foot” since it lost its majority in 2011.
He said that the APNU+AFC alliance and its confident, upbeat launching held last Wednesday in an electric atmosphere, will keep the PPP on the back foot, if their campaign is supplemented with a credible programme.
Ramkarran noted that the only response of the PPP is its record from 1992 to the present and of the People National Congress Reform’s past. He said however that advances made since 1992 no longer inspire because conditions before 1992 are distant memories.
Ramkarran said that the PPP “does not refer to its record from 2011 to the present during which time, according to the just published LAPOP poll, there has been a sharp decline in optimism about politics and the economy.”
