The PNC-led APNU and the AFC, as the campaign for Elections 2025 heats up, once again has started another ominous attack against SUGAR. No matter how they disguise their intentions, their ominous threats are very opaque, clear for every sugar worker and for every Guyanese citizen to see. Their plans are clear – close sugar. No matter how they describe it – “right-sizing”, “reassigning assets”, etc. – the message is loud and clear.
They might have succeeded in fooling some sugar workers in 2011 and 2015. But in 2025, the same old lines will not work. Sugar workers will not be fooled again.
One would think that the PNC and the AFC leaders would want to avoid at all cost making promises about SUGAR. Afterall, they betrayed sugar workers who overwhelmingly rejected and punished them in the 2018 and 2023 local government elections and in Elections 2020.
The PNC-lead APNU and the AFC had promised not to close any sugar estate, to give every sugar worker a 20% pay increase. When David Granger, Moses Nagamootoo and Khemrag Ramjattan jointly took the stage at Whim and other places in 2015 and boldly promised that “sugar was too big to fail”; that no sugar estate will be closed, and, a hefty 20% pay increase for sugar workers, sugar workers and the Guyanese people took them at their word. The promise of 20% wages and salary increases tempted some sugar workers.
To the utter dismay of sugar workers and their families, the APNU/AFC promise was empty as they proceeded between 2015 and 2020 to close four sugar estates, fired more than 7,000 sugar workers, forced sugar workers to fight in court for their severance pay, invested little to nothing in the other sugar estates, causing them to deteriorate, neglected the cane fields, the factories and the field equipment, took away assets from GUYSUCO, placing valuable GUYSUCO assets in NICIL, burdened GUYSUCO with a loan of $30B, left all liabilities with GUYSUCO, and froze the sugar workers’ wages, salaries and benefits. The only times when sugar workers’ wages and salaries were frozen were in the 1980s under a PNC government and between 2015 and 2020 when the PNC-led APNU and AFC formed the government.
Previously, between 2012 and 2015, using their one-seat majority, the blocked support for GUYSUCO. Since 2020, they have consistently opposed any support for GUYSUCO. Their history is one of attacking and putting GUYSUCO and sugar workers under siege. We must never forget when AFC’s Ramjattan stood in the hallowed halls of Parliament and declared that the only reason the PPP want to support sugar is because sugar workers are supporters of the PPP.
Now that Elections 2025 are virtually at our doorsteps, the PNC and the AFC are back with lofty promises for GUYSUCO and sugar workers.
The question is who, which sugar worker, which Guyanese citizen, would be so gullible to believe them, to trust them? Every promise they have ever made to sugar workers have been broken promises. Their trail of broken promises has stirred distrust and fear among sugar workers, their families and for the Guyanese people as a whole.
Distrust of the PNC and the AFC is fueled not just by broken promises, but through their hypocrisy, dishonesty and disrespect for people. Jointly, the PNC-led APNU and AFC closed four sugar estates and, had the PPP not secured victory at Elections 2020, the PNC-led APNU/AFC government would have closed the sugar industry. To insult the Guyanese people now with the redefinition of what they did, with a different narrative, is sheer dishonesty.
The narrative today is to deny they closed any estate. Today, with elections looming, the PNC leader, Aubrey Norton and the AFC former, disgraced leader, Khemraj Ramjattan, present their assault against GUYSUCO as “right-sizing”, removing “redundancy”. By whatever name they refer to their actions, they cannot change the truth. The TRUTH, the hard, cold, irrefutable truth is that they closed the majority of sugar estates and they were on their way to fully closing the industry. No word-smithing can change the truth.
Aubrey Norton at his press conference this morning (June 27, 2025) asserted that no sugar worker will be fired. The shamelessness with which he made that statement is frightening. Norton cannot seriously believe that sugar workers and the Guyanese people have forgotten that his party led the massive firing of more than 7,000 sugar workers between 2015 and 2020, an albatross he carries heavily around his and his party’s necks. To now insist that no sugar worker will be fired is a promise that only fools will believe.
Not only did they fire more than 7,000 sugar workers, they refused to compensate the workers with their legal entitlement of severance. The present Attorney General, in his private capacity, supported by the PPP, provide legal representation for workers who appealed to the judiciary and won their claims for severance with interest owed. Even then, many sugar workers had to wait until the PPP came back into government to obtain their legal rights.
Norton spoke of diversification and using GUYSUCO’s assets, including land, for diversification. One wonders if this was a Freudian “slip-of-the-tongue”, revealing the truth, which is to close estates and use GUYSUCO’s assets for another wild, unaccountable spending spree, just as they did with the $30B loan that was taken between 2015 and 2020.
The PNC leader promised that investments will be made for diversification of GUYSUCO, a plan that the opposition bluntly panned when President Irfaan Ali emphasized this a few weeks ago. The truth is that the PPP Government started this diversification already and now, like Christopher Columbus, Norton and the PNC has discovered. They are clueless, resorting to word-smithing the plans already in place by the PPP.
What is ominous is that Aubrey Norton refuses to pronounce on whether sugar estates will be closed or privatize, hiding behind “studies” that they previously either refused to do or ignored. This is always a confession of what they truly intend to do – close the industry.
Not to be outdone, the AFC decided a few hours later to hold their own press conference dealing with sugar. Khemraj Ramjattan insisted that Guyana cannot develop with sugar for various reasons. For various reasons, therefore, he essentially concluded that sugar must be closed, even though he insists on defining this as “right-sizing”. He sees investments in GUYSUCO as a waste of money, calling GUYSUCO, once again, a “blackhole”. It is categorically disgraceful. Ramjattan is shameless.
Ramjattan in answering to questions from Adam Harris claimed that the PPP did not keep its promise of reopening closed estates. The PPP had promised to reopen sugar estates where feasible. Rose Hall Estate, Canje, was re-opened in 2024 and its cultivation continues to expand. Cultivation at Skeldon has resumed, with more than 1,000 acres of sugar cane already on stream and this is expected to significantly increase by 2026. In relation to Wales, it was decided that since APNU/AFC had completely removed all equipment and demolished totally the factory, the gas-to-energy project would replace sugar. The PPP kept its promise. Ramjattan shamelessly ignored the accomplishments.
As Elections 2025 approaches, the Guyanese people have a clear choice before them when it comes to sugar. The PPP has made its intentions clear – invest in GUYSUCO to keep sugar alive, while diversifying GUYSUCO, ensuring that sugar workers have a secure future. The other parties are equally clear – close the sugar industry, even if they are disguising this intention with words such as “right-sizing”.