Last Updated on Wednesday, 14 October 2026, 23:56 by Written By Denis Chabrol
Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo Wednesday night sounded a call for his ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and the opposition People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) to change the old way of race-based political thinking and work together for their survival and the country.
“We believe that the future of Guyana would involve at some level and some fashion, whatever that framework may be, these parties working together. They have to, of necessity. That’s when this country can accomplish all the dreams of those who had to flee this country and seek a better fortune elsewhere and the dreams of those who are living here now. That’s how we’d achieve it,” he said in remarks at an evening of tributes to former PNCR leader Robert Corbin who died on October 4 after a prolonged illness. “Trust me, the country needs now a new form of enlightened thinking. And a new approach to solving issues,” he also said at the event held at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, Liliendaal, Greater Georgetown.
Former PNCR executive member, Lurlene Nestor, who spoke on behalf of a PNCR group in the United States (US), said Mr Corbin was known for humility and the need to redistribute wealth to the underprivileged. “You can’t have public office and enrich yourself and you have street families,” she told the gathering that also included a number of PPP Civic government ministers.
He cautioned that unless the PPP and the PNC change their old way of thinking, they “will face extinction.” He said youths’ support was fluid. “Young people of today, they may be with you on one issue, and with me on another issue but, but they still support either of the two parties,” he said.
Mr Jagdeo said the PNC would have to decide its future in the context of the new world, its challenges, and how it would adjust its philosophy or thinking to be play its role in the new Guyana.
“Unless we develop that new framework, and unless our parties grow, and mature and get over the hurt of what happened historically, unless we understand that, that period, and how it was foisted on us, and how it harmed us for such a long time, we will not be able to give true leadership and realise the full potential of this country,” he said.
In paying respects to the former Deputy Prime Minister and later Opposition Leader, Mr Jagdeo praised Mr Corbin for taking bold decisions of laying the groundwork for both parties to work closely. Then the President of Guyana, Mr Jagdeo said Mr Corbin had been harshly criticised for working closely with the PPP, eventually seeing him depart from his party’s leadership. The PPP General Secretary rubbished even posthumous claims in some quarters that Mr Corbin had sold out. “I heard over just a couple of days ago, a puppet of Jagdeo. That’s far could be the furthest thing from the truth. Robert Corbin defended his party fiercely in every engagement we’ve had. He always defended his party, was the strongest advocate for the People’s National Congress but he had a bigger vision for the country,” he said.
Mr Jagdeo, who previously served as president from 1999 to 2011, said it was easy for him to have worked with Mr Corbin because the latter understood how governments work because of his experience in PNC and leadership. “We could have seen, he never demanded of us things that were that could not be accomplished by any government,” Mr Jagdeo told the evening of reflections on Mr Corbin attended by a wide cross-section of PNCR supporters as well as members of the legal fraternity, and former PNCR members who have since joined We Invest in Nationhood or embraced the PPP Civic.
Recalling that he had had the unanimous support of the PPP’s executive to engage the PNC on Guyana’s future, he said Mr Corbin had a “real view” of politics and was “willing to take chance”, against the backdrop of similar ideological working class orientation along with a prosperous private sector and patriotism. Mr Jagdeo said he and Mr Corbin started their engagements aware that their “two big parties” with their individual and common history as a single party in 1950. “There were not many things dividing us, separating us, except this old boogie of race and racial politics and we recognised that coming together was good for the country,” he said.
Ultimately, he said the PPP and the PNCR could not come together unless they built trust that had been eroded by many decades of opposing each other. He said the 2001 constitutional reform process had seen far-reaching changes that had made it the most inclusive in the Commonwealth. He conceded that there continued to experience “friction” in implementing many of the new features of the Constitution that would have led “almost to a legislative form of power-sharing. “If we were to bring the same mistrust that harmed us from accomplishing things at the legislative level, into the executive or the cabinet, we would have had a paralysis and the worst thing can happen to government, any government in the world is policy paralysis,” he said.
As PPP General Secretary, Mr Jagdeo said he works very hard to understand local and global challenges and adjust his party’s thinking, making it more receptive and inclusive to new ideas, approaches and even its opponents up to the day before. “They did so, not because they hated us personally, but because often, the party philosophy forced them to take some positions of that nature,” he added.
In 1985, the then Cheddi Jagan-led main opposition PPP and the Forbes Burnham-led ruling PNC had held unity talks but they collapsed after Mr Burnham died in August of that year and the Desmond Hoyte-led PNC government had soon shed its socialist outlook, embraced the United States and moved towards a market-oriented economy.
