GEORGETOWN – APNU+AFC joins with Guyana in remembering the life of former President Dr. Cheddi Jagan. The People’s Progressive Party, as is customary will host an official function at Babu John at the weekend. The event follows our own successful campaign launch, one where we committed to move this country forward in the spirit of national unity, reconciliation and to putting an end to wanton corruption, inequality and impunity.
We urge that the PPP return to the ideals of Dr. Jagan, one of the founding fathers of this nation, and ask them to join us in ensuring a campaign that is focused on genuine issues and on the reality of the challenges facing ordinary Guyanese people today.
We expect, in addition to PM Candidate Elisabeth Harper, there will be a few fresh faces at Babu John. We urge their influence in assisting the PPP to undertake a far cleaner, far more decent affair than this nation has been subject to over the past few years. This is not a time for crassness and distraction and personal attacks – it is time, and opportunity, for the governing party, faced with a loss of executive power, to engage in deep introspection about how it has lost its way, straying from the ideals of Dr. Jagan.
Dr. Jagan was a leader who was focused on issues, a decent man of class who embodied a spirit of grace, of personal integrity, of insisting on truth, on modest living, on the equality of all people, and on ensuring that the concerns of ordinary people, the working class, was always foremost in his consideration.
The PPP under Jagdeo has become far removed from the principles of Dr. Jagan, the man it refers to as its “living guide”, and is now tainted with corruption, excess, inequality, a lack of respect for human rights and a general disregard for the dignity of public office.
It is inconceivable for Dr. Jagan to have supported the spending of millions of dollars on one minister’s teeth when children that come under her jurisdiction cannot afford shoes or are forced to fetch wood and water to their school.
It is inconceivable that Dr. Jagan would lie to the people to justify pouring hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into a luxury Marriott hotel while the University of Guyana, an institution he started, and which subsequent administrations have built upon, does not have adequate functioning toilets for its students.
It is inconceivable that Dr. Jagan would have chartered a luxury jet to look after a minor stomach irritation while almost every other week there is at least one report of the public healthcare system failing some child or young mother, frequently fatally so.
It is inconceivable that Dr. Jagan would mount a platform and lewdly gyrate to music one moment, and then go on to refer to the independent media as ‘vultures and carrion crows’ the next.
It is inconceivable that Dr. Jagan would have his personal security assault an Amerindian man for speaking out, or have an Amerindian leader falsely accused of rape because that leader simply asked him to follow protocol before a visit.
APNU+AFC recognizes that this country has been given a rare opportunity in the life of nations, a second chance at correcting history, at truly moving forward. In the spirit of national reconciliation and the establishment of one united people, more worthy our heritage, we salute the memory of Dr. Cheddi Jagan, the great man who founded the PPP. It is time that his party truly seeks to return to the ideals for which he strove and divorces itself from cussdown politics. The people of Guyana deserve better. It is time for one nation.
-ENDS-
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