The Leadership and Democracy (LEAD) project proposed by the United States government has sufficiently broad support among the Guyanese people for the Guyana Government to have second thoughts about it. Some of this support is somewhat belated, e.g. the support of the Private Sector Commission (PSC) came a month after the government’s rejection of the project and only after the latter had stated its intention to discuss its possible continuance with the US Embassy. Rather than suggesting independent action, the PSC support places it more in its traditional role of backstopping the regime’s most recent position.
The popular support of the people themselves is rooted in the general awareness that it is the political system that has largely been responsible for our being the second poorest country in Caricom, with consequent deleterious impacts on education, health and our social issues. The system needs to be urgently fixed and one would have thought that any project that could contribute to the process of construction/reconstruction would have been universally welcomed by all. Of course, in Guyana,
