President Irfaan Ali, reiterating his commitment to national unity – and to ONE GUYANA – said at a recent outreach in Belle West, West Bank Demerara: “We are one million percent committed to national unity”. In doing so, he added to his growing credential as the unifier-in-chief of Guyana.
At an earlier outreach on the West Bank Demerara, a young lawyer, Thandi McAllister, a former youth leader and a former executive of the PNC, joined the President, praising his leadership and vision, and urged citizens to “trust him with another term”. Her pleas came not only because she is impressed with his role as unifier-in-chief, but also because of the record of his government in implementing transformative development initiatives.
In so doing, Ms. McAllister echoed sentiments expressed by others who served in senior positions in the PNC, such as James Bond, and others from the AFC, such as Leonard Craig. But, increasingly, in the outreaches, Afro-Guyanese are showing up and openly and boldly saying the same things about President Irfaan Ali and his PPP Government.
Some have migrated away from the PNC/AFC and are now bystanders because they have not joined the PPP. The list is long, and you can bet your last dollar that some of these persons will end up campaigning with the PPP in Elections 2025. These persons include Amna Ali, Vanessa Kissoon, Sheryl Sampson, Norman Browne.
The migration away from the PNC/AFC to the PPP has become a tsunami that only the PNC/AFC refuse to see. Everyone else recognizes the migration, but the PNC/AFC pretend that no such thing is taking place. One would have thought that LGE 2023 would have created an urgency for the PNC and the AFC and the one-man, one-woman parties. In fact, LGE 2023 was a harbinger of the migration of supporters, almost exclusively Afro-Guyanese, from the PNC/AFC to the PPP. If the PNC/AFC thought that the LGE 2023 was an aberration, they are being sadly stupid to ignore what the world is seeing.
Actually, the migration became discernible earlier, during LGE 2018. The PNC barely got 30%, while the AFC barely scraped up 4% of the votes, compared to the PPP more than 64%. The PNC/AFC choose to ignore a clear signal in 2018. They paid a price in Elections 2020.
Elections 2020 indeed confirmed the migration that was visible in LGE 2018. Because the PNC/AFC chose to be deaf and blind in the midst of dangerous decibels, Elections 2025 is set to be a clear decimation, with the PPP amassing a healthy majority in parliament.
While President Ali passionately pursues his responsibility as the unifier-in-chief, PNC/AFC senior leaders and activists continue to preach division and racism. Vincent Alexander of the PNC wants to be the divisor-in-chief, as he continues to preach that the PNC is the only political home for Afro-Guyanese. For him, Afro-Guyanese belong to the PNC. David Hinds had called Afro-Guyanese who support the PPP slave catchers, house slaves and traitors. Alexander and others, like Terrence Campbell, have gone out of their way to defend David Hinds. Terrence Campbell insists that Afro-Guyanese must support the PNC and AFC, even though he concedes that the leaders of these parties are amateurs and lack maturity.
Campbell is not wrong when it comes to his depiction of the leaders of the PNC and AFC as amateurs and immature. While President Ali and the PPP are busy accelerating development in Guyana, and are out in the field already campaigning for Elections 2025, these two political parties and their leaders are busy playing games about whether they will compete in Elections 2025 as separate political parties or as coalition partners. They are playing games about who will be the presidential candidate and who will get 60% and 40% of parliamentary seats and government ministries.
As Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo stated, instead of the PNC and AFC leaderships focusing on what they can offer to the Guyanese people and how they will continue to ensure Guyana remains a global leader in economic growth, they are locked in a fight to divide the spoils. This is exactly why Campbell described them as immature and amateurish.
Meanwhile, the PPP is busy completing dozens of transformative projects that were conceptualized and implemented in President Ali’s first term. At the same time, the PPP has begun to entice and positively tease the population about projects, programs and initiatives which would constitute its manifesto for Elections 2025.
While both the Demerara River Bridge and the Wismar Bridge will be commissioned before Elections 2025, Minister Juan Edghill has been talking about bridging of the Berbice River at Kwakwani. This would add another opportunity for the complete transformation of Region 10. The communities in the upper Berbice River in Region 10 would suddenly see economic and social opportunities that they could not even dare dream of before. This is one reason why staunch PNC/AFC supporters in Region 10 are migrating to the PPP. It is one reason why the PPP has become confident that it can win a national seat in Region 10 in Elections 2025.
While the Corentyne River Bridge would not likely be completed before Elections 2025, the Linden-to-Lethem Highway would be significantly completed. In President Ali’s second term, the Corentyne River Bridge and the Linden-to-Lethem Highway would be commissioned. It would mean that a transformative development project would link three countries of South America – Guyana, Suriname and Brazil – beginning the integration of French Guiana into the economic platform between Guyana, Brazil and Suriname.
Quietly, but clearly, the decade-long talk of strengthening our Caricom relationship, taking a clear leadership role in Caricom while also chasing our continental destiny, is becoming reality. The unifier-in-chief, President Irfaan Ali, is positioning Guyana to become the hub that integrates Caricom and South America. This is leadership at its best.