The Government rigging elections, banning food items, forcing people to wait for days in long lines for food and other necessary items are things that traumatized people in the 1970s and 1980s. No political party in their right mind would, should, be proud of these things. Yet, the PNC are not just unapologetic, but brag about these things.
There are those among us who insist and demand that we must not look back in history, but history reminds us what we should be careful not to repeat in the future. Now that the PNC tell us they remain unapologetic, and are proud of the things stated above, we must wonder what else they are proud of, because these are the things they will repeat.
Recently, in Parliament, the Leader of the Opposition, Aubrey Norton, passionately declared how proud he and his party, the PNC, are that they banned many food products that were part of the daily lives of the Guyanese population in the 1970s and 1980s. A few months ago, another senior leader of the PNC, Hamilton Green, spoke proudly of rigged elections, and intimated that, given any chance, the PNC should rig elections even more blatantly; because, as he explained it, only one group in Guyana has the legitimate right to occupy the seat of government. He was proud to deem those who support the PPP as “devils”. Since, in his eyes, only Indo-Guyanese supported the PPP, he was making a racist statement.
Banning food items and making lines for days to get food remain a traumatic experience for the Guyanese people. The majority of Guyanese now were born after 1990, so they did not experience the humiliation, the struggle, the discrimination and harassment that people experienced simply to feed their families. The young people have heard stories about this experience, and many find it difficult to believe that this had actually taken place in Guyana. The audacity to brag today about what the PNC did to the Guyanese people is simply mind-boggling.
After 1970, faced with a collapsing economy, the PNC did three despicable things, and we wonder if they remain proud of these things. First, they went on a borrowing binge. The debt stood at US$267M in 1970, but skyrocketed to US$638M by 1973, more than doubling in just three years. The debt reached US$2.5B by 1980. The debt-GDP ratio was already about five times, or 500%. By the time they left office, the debt-to-GDP ratio was 953%, one of the worst in the world. At the time, Guyana needed 153% of its revenue to service the debt. In fact, by 1985, Guyana could not service its debt, and suspended all payments. Yet, today, the PNC hypocritically rail about the “increasing debt crisis” under President Irfaan Ali and the PPP government, with a debt-to-GDP ratio of only about 25%.
Second, they plundered the national reserve. Not only did they go on a borrowing binge, but also squandered the total foreign currency reserve. The reserve stood at US$250M in 1973. By 1980, the reserve was minus US$350M. Recall they did the same things between 2015 and 2020. They used up all the reserve gold, almost G$25B worth, and they also almost totally depleted the national reserve of foreign currency, almost US$750M.
Third, they started to print money. This was perhaps even more reprehensible than the borrowing binge. The money supply doubled between 1973 and 1975, and increased by 40% in the 1975–1977 period. These increases in money supply were not because Guyana earned more through an invigorated economy, but it was fake money. It created an inflation that added to the already high poverty rate. It is no wonder that, by 1985, economists estimated poverty at between 67 and 88%.
Would Norton tell the nation if they are proud of their record of illegally printing money? Of their legacy as one of the world’s historical worst in increasing national debts? And of plundering the national reserves?
Let us list other failures between 1970 and 1980 for a moment, and ask Norton if the PNC are proud of these too: the road to Brazil, the potato scheme, cassava factories, the glass factory, the toothpick factory, the tomato factory, the leather factory, the Sanata fabric factory, the aborted hydro-electric project, and the incomplete MMA project.
In the period after 1970, the PNC removed subsidies for agriculture; increased taxation; increased prices for virtually all items needed for everyday living, not just on food; retrenched workers in the public sector; froze salaries and wages for public servants and for sugar workers; rationed access to foreign exchange; cut social sector spending, with health and education being reduced to between 1 and 1.5% of budget; and closed the Housing Ministry while increasing spending on Joint Services to an average of 18% of the national budget.
Adding to this long list of terrible, reprehensible things, the PNC also used the security forces to thief elections and as scabs to break strikes in the sugar industry; they practised party paramountcy; flew the PNC flag over the Court of Appeal. If those were not enough, they coerced the nation through violence such as the murder of Father Darke, Ohene Koama, Edward Dublin, Walter Rodney, the Ballot Box Martyrs, the use of PNC thugs to attack opposition members, the use of the court to intimidate and harass people with treason charges, etc.
Since the leader of the PNC told us how proud they are of some of their despicable history, and since they repeated some of these things between 2015 and 2020, it is in our interest to know if they are proud of these other things. This is not looking back; this is looking forward to ensure we never ever allow the repeat of these things we disdained in the past.