Cash, other initiatives in Amerindian communities will backfire on gov’t in elections – PNCR’s Norton

Last Updated on Wednesday, 21 August 2024, 20:00 by Writer

Leader of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR), Aubrey Norton on Tuesday said he did not believe that cash and other disbursements to Indigenous Amerindian communities would dent the opposition’s chances of securing their votes in next year’s general and regional elections.

“In fact, I believe that the PPP’s support will increase our votes,” he said when asked by Demerara Waves Online News.

Mr Norton’s views came one day after President Irfaan Ali announced that Amerindian villages would receive US$23.2 million this year although Guyana earned 15 percent less from its carbon credit sale to the American oil company, Hess. He also said that more small contracts would be awarded to Amerindians in their communities. Reacting specifically to government’s increase in the carbon credit disbursements to villages, Mr Norton said that act was arbitrary rather than consultative as most Indigenous communities had been calling for 50 percent and more.

The PNCR Leader said the Toshaos (Amerindian village chiefs) were resisting domination and so government’s approach could backfire in the polling booths at the 2025 general and regional elections. “When you dominate people and they resist, they will not come out and tell you ‘I ain’t going to vote for you’ but they will end up not voting,” said Mr Norton, a former political science lecturer.

Another drawback, he said, was that government’s programmes in Indigenous Amerindian communities was not making them independent. For instance, he said contracts were being awarded in Indigenous Amerindian communities “in large measure” to supporters of the governing People’s Progressive Party. In contrast, Mr Norton said if the opposition was elected to government next year, it would train Indigenous Amerindians in technical skills, financial literacy and small business management as means of assisting them to become contractors. “The PPP cannot afford that. To do that is to cut out part of the corruption money they enjoy and so we believe that, as we speak to the Indigenous community they are understanding,” said Mr Norton who is also Guyana’s Opposition Leader. He said when the opposition visits the Amerindian communities, residents were willing to engage and eventually vote the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) out of office.

President Ali and Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo were at pains on Monday and Tuesday to outline the PPPC administration’s delivery of health care, education, cash grants, increased pensions, reemployment of community support officers, land titling, community-driven carbon credit-financed projects, among several projects and programmes. In what seemed to be electioneering, Dr Ali and Mr Jagdeo repeatedly highlighted and contrasted the trustworthiness and success of the PPP with the incumbent government with the PNC and its coalition track record between 1964 and 1992, and 2015 and 2020. “When we do comparisons and where we are today, many people may think it’s a political issue but it’s a factual one. If we don’t speak of this, then we cannot understand the progress we made, as a country, or the progress you’ve made in the communities and then you would not be able to differentiate the differences between the People’s Progressive Party that I’m General Secretary of and the other political parties,” Mr Jagdeo said Tuesday at the National Toshaos Council conference.