PPP worried about potential electoral impact of opposition’s corruption accusations

Last Updated on Friday, 27 September 2024, 22:57 by Writer

The governing People’s Progressive Party (PPP) is concerned that it could lose support at next year’s general and regional elections as a result of the opposition’s repeated accusations of corruption, and so has opted to push back aggressively, party General Secretary Bharrat Jagdeo said Thursday.

“We have to point out the differences and what steps we took to address corruption and what steps we are taking to address corruption and we have to fight off this before, which we did not do enough in 2015,” he said when asked whether the PPP’s reviews or surveys were showing that the party could lose the 2025 elections due to corruption allegations.

He said the opposition realised that waging a campaign that the PPP was racist has lost potency and so they have resorted to using corruption as a campaign tool that “worked well for them” for the 2015 general and regional elections. “They are back at it again because they can’t use the track record or the racism so much and so we, as a political party and as government, we have a duty to fight this off but we also have a duty to point out to the people or to make it clear what our line is,” Mr Jagdeo said.

The coalition of the People’s National Congress Reform-led A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) had won the 2015 elections by 4,506 votes with the APNU+AFC pipping the PPP by one vote in Region 8. However the gap between the two major parties widened in 2020 in favour of the PPP by 15,416. The difference between the two main contestants in Region 8 widened by 100 in 2020.

For several weeks now, the PPP has been on a steadily intensifying mission to address corruption and delays in infrastructural projects by either threatening to or actually cancelling contracts for works that had been taking too long and threatening to take action against people allegedly involved in corruption. Home Affairs Minister Robeson Benn, in an unprecedented move, even openly said there was procurement-related corruption in the police, fire and prison services. Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall earlier this week used the overwhelming majority of his Facebook show to reiterate government’s position against corruption.

A number of multi-million dollar contracts had been awarded to companies with little or no experience to build major infrastructural projects as well as comparatively small drainage facilities that turned out to be long-delayed or defective. Though the opposition Alliance For Change (AFC) had lodged a number of formal complaints with the Public Procurement Commission, in the end the contracts remained intact.

Recalling the 2015 period, Mr Jagdeo said “people believed” the APNU+AFC’s claims of corruption and so this time around, “we need to ensure that the government’s position is in the public domain.”

Similarly, the PPP General Secretary said public officers were warned that government would not countenance any violation of the procurement law or regulations or any shoddy evaluation. “The opposition has a motive to make it seem as though we are tolerant of these practices,” he said.

Mr Jagdeo, who is also Guyana’s second Vice President, said despite the fact that the then David Granger-led administration had used the Special Organised Crime Unit of the Guyana Police Force, established the State Assets Recovery Agency and spent millions of dollars on conducting 45 audits to prove corruption, that administration made “very little cases”.