Dear Editor,
In election campaigns in normal countries, political parties make pledges and offer inducements to win or retain the support of voters. Parties then depend on the free will of the people to decide which candidate best meets their demands or serves their interest. The PPP/C has corrupted this time-honoured social pact. In the process, it has disfigured our democracy and dehumanized our citizens. The PPP/C government feels no guilt in using its status as the country’s largest employer, largest awarder of contracts, land, social assistance, and other state resources, and as the sole holder of coercive power to repress the free will and conscience of voters. For the PPP, citizens can’t have free choice when, as the government, it is providing their main earnings. The PPP believes dependency must mean bondage. This is dependency politics at its most callous.
This doctrine is rooted in the DNA of the PPP. Dependency politics goes to the core of the PPP’s self-identity, self-worth, and self-preservation. With Cheddi Jagan, this politics was paternalistic and benign. With the current PPP crop, it has become heartless and dehumanizing. Dependency politics so defines the PPP that should all Guyanese become economically independent, the PPP would implode into pointlessness. During this LGE campaign, the PPP shamelessly bared itself. It abused its state power to threaten the livelihoods and lives of Guyanese, by using cash transfers, contracts, jobs, and other opportunities as blackmail. I was outraged that the PPP put many citizens in a situation where they had to choose between their soul and their survival. That is the dehumanization of which I speak. No such party deserves to rule this country!
As such, I join in applauding those APNU candidates and campaigners who, despite the risk, fearlessly followed their principles and spirit. I applaud those voters who stood up to the PPP’s coercion and those who voted as a form of protest. As regards those who jumped ship, I call on APNU supporters not to denounce them, but to empathize with them. Let us still embrace them as members of the family. Let us not allow the PPP to divide us as we seek to build a country where people can enjoy a good life and feel free to vote their conscience.
Noticeably, more and more Guyanese are realizing that the PPP and its DNA-driven politics of dependency will not eradicate poverty, economic insecurity, inequality, and marginalization. PPP-ism will not lift our standard of living, whether we are at the bottom or in the middle of the income ladder. The PPP is hardwired to maintain the status quo —under a smokescreen of rosy talk, one-off cash grants, bonuses, and paltry salary increases. Lots of bad things could be said about the PPP (its corruption, discrimination, disrespect for women, etc). But among the worst is its conviction that a deprived and dependent population is a political virtue, exploitable to feed into its own warped self-identity and self-esteem.
Sincerely,
Sherwood Lowe
