President Irfaan Ali while paying tribute to former presidents Cheddi and Janet Jagan at Babu Jaan yesterday stressed that racism will not be allowed to succeed in Guyana under his government; he warned that the days of those who push such an agenda are numbered.
He stated, “We will disband, destroy and completely wipe out the weapon of racism that continues to be used against the people of this country. And those who handle the weapon must understand that their days are numbered and their days are coming to an end because that weapon is being destroyed globally and that weapon will be buried here in Guyana.
“Comrade Cheddi lived for the working class but he did not live to see the working class remain the working class or remain in poverty, he lived to uplift them out of poverty.”
According to him, the PPP/C continues to fight to uplift and remove the working class from poverty and to give them equal opportunities. “So the more persons in the working class who can graduate up, it is paying greater respect to the legacy of Dr Cheddi Jagan,” he said.
He then pointed out that before oil and gas, under Jagan until the PPP/C left government, minimum wage in Guyana increased by 1,577%, “that is the legacy of Dr Jagan, the Peoples Progressive Party.”
Between 1993 and 1995, minimum wage increased by 100%, he said, while between 1991 and 2014 the country’s external debt was reduced by 50%, and between 1991 and 2014 the debt-to-GDP ratio moved from 677% to 34%, “that is the legacy that we celebrate.”
According to Ali, the naysayers don’t highlight such facts since they have one agenda which is to gain political power.
He stated that between 2015 and 2019 under the APNU+AFC administration sugar production declined by $21 billion. “These guys closed the sugar estates and today they have the audacity to sit in a hotel and to write banners saying give more to the sugar workers when they destroyed completely in less than five years the sugar estates,” he said.
Additionally, during the same period, he said, forestry declined by $31 billion, and bauxite declined by $9 billion, stressing that the country lost US$283 million in foreign currency earnings under the previous administration.
Noting that revenue from VAT increased by 43% under the previous administration, Ali stated, “In these five years these very people introduced more than 200 new taxes on the people of this country and they have the audacity to say remove VAT… They were hunting you down, they were hunting everyone down.”
Furthermore, he said that private consumption in those five years also reduced by $77 billion. “What that means is that people did not have money to spend,” he explained, “that is why shops were closing, markets were closing; $77 billion that was available was no longer available in this five years to be spent because like vampires they were sucking the sap out of people, out of our country. This is the truth. This is the unavoidable truth that they don’t want to speak about.”
Ali told those gathered, decked out in their red to celebrate the life and legacies of the Jagans, that to understand the difference between now and then people must understand the hardships inflicted on Guyanese under the previous administration.
“That is why we cannot divorce Dr Jagan from the PPP and we cannot divorce the PPP from Dr Jagan. That is why the policies we pursue must be reflected in the core values and principles,” he said, adding that the party’s manifesto in 1992 spoke about food security, universal education, health, public infrastructure and investment in human capital “and that is what this government continues to do every single day…Doing it and delivering is living the legacy of Dr Cheddi Jagan.”
Delivering uniform grants and other grants to school children, the school feeding programmes, jobs to help the most vulnerable in society, building a healthcare system to deliver world-class healthcare, uplifting the lives of women and children, helping businesses to grow and expand and taking the leadership of food security in the Caribbean are “ delivering on the legacy of Dr Cheddi Jagan,” he emphasised.
Ali also stressed the importance of pushing and developing the private sector as he noted that “a private sector that is dead is an economy that is dead” and his government does not want a dead private sector but rather a flourishing one for the benefit of all.
He also took the opportunity to point out that the PPP/C is a strong party that has created many legends such as Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo whom he said they should be proud of.
Saying that every citizen is a “shareholder”, Ali said they must “bring back home every single shareholder” and “do so in action, … in programmes and … in our personal and collective commitment to the value system of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic.”
