Lurching from demanding the logistic impossibility of Bio-metrics, through using the diplomatic community as the ‘headmaster's office’ to submit complaints - the stutter step that’s Opposition strategy- is the one constant that takes it in to General Elections.
The appearance of objectivity and impartiality by International Observers are the elements that lend legitimacy, make the whole external observation law a function of fair elections and a measure of transparency that is welcome by members in the electorate looking for that truth and honesty when it comes to the casting of their votes.
In the State which ranks 44th out of 50 States in Education, it is easy to see how transient Politicians would patch together a Campaign from some past template, especially when they are guaranteed cover in the form of endorsements from politicians who once bled blue.
Of the 50 years the country existed as a Cooperative republic 23 consecutive years saw it governed purely for access to its treasury through a series of Accounting and Auditing frauds.
The image of endemic corruption and wholesale banditry that follows the country was earned under the Jagdeo and PPP Administration. A Coalition Government will fix that.
We expect a higher level of campaigning, one that rises above the overdone wine downs and the tantalize and the hints at raunchiness. Campaigns are events at which politicians solicit the vote not expect it; which would require them to make a substantial case to both their base and to others who may be won over.
Granted, almost anything can happen in a year but a bountiful harvest of political disservice is not politics as usual, not when it straddles appeasing Venezuela and the vicious attacks on Afro Guyanese that are normally hidden because of shame and discretion.
Is it really civic blasphemy to expect the full disclosure and democracy that was promised and not feel taken by the uncomplicated level of obfuscation that’s insulting both to supporters rights and intelligence?
The purging of these stalwarts by this President on the eve of an election, in the face of a border dispute with a country that has already occupied part of Guyana since 1966 and in the advent of oil, questions why he has chosen to disembowel the nation’s foreign service to place highly sensitive matters in the hands of politically appointed novices, for reasons that do not benefit Guyana- and at a time such as now.
Might we add that our decision to carry this is no way our condemnation of the Coalition. We still support their run for governance as strongly as we denounce that of the PPP’s.
Stoking hostility and raising rancor remains the single offer of the Party that has the word 'progressive ' in it... having already demonstrated what it does with national revenues and nation building, for as long as many of these voters have been alive.
