By Dr. Randy Persaud, Professor Emeritus Sound policy agendas and effective communication of those policies are the backbone of successful political parties in competitive political systems. This is especially true in countries where the values of democracy undergird political conduct. Yet, many never seem to get this basic lesson. In Guyana, for instance, instead of sound policies and corrersponding media ...
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OPINION: Five observations about the WPA
By Dr. Randy Persaud, Professor Emeritus The WPA has been around since the 1970s. In the early days it played a useful role in helping the PPP remove the authoritarian People’s National Congress. One of the WPA stalwarts, Dr. Walter Rodney, was assassinated by the state in June 1980. The COI into Rodney’s death directly pointed fingers at the then ...
Read More »OPINION: Guyanese of African Descent (Indian Descent): is somebody kidding?
by GHK Lall It is strange, the curious twists and turns that almost all issues devolve within this town. Take this matter of a name for a race – a slur, a profane expression, make no mistake – and Guyanese are treated to a political science, history, and sociology lesson. I murmur a silent prayer that the realms of biology ...
Read More »OPINION: Why the PPP is the only national Party in Guyana – Part I
By Dr. Randy Persaud, Professor Emeritus, American University, Washington DC The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) is the only national party in Guyana. But what does it mean when we say the PPP is a national political party, and the only national political party in Guyana. A truly national political party must have, by my reckoning, nine elements. In Part I, ...
Read More »OPINION: Guyana 2020: Can we all get along?
By Paul Sanders Guyana 2020: Can we all get along? Two people. Two narratives. Same agenda. So you’d think they should be okay, right? Wrong. These people are long time adversaries. And, again, as usual, they are at cross purposes. This rendezvous is a festival of Indo and Afro Guyanese refining and mastering the art of bawling in high intensive ...
Read More »OPINION: I am not interested in who should win, but in all that is lost
by GHK Lall I look back this first time at Elections 2020 and cringe that some of the things that I had identified have come to pass. I would have preferred to be embarrassingly wrong on all counts; it turns out that I was closer to the reality than I could have imagined. First, several times late last year and ...
Read More »OPINION: Political groups campaigns filled with everything, except this one issue
By GHK Lall As I note the campaign emphases of the two major political parties in this elections season, there is one significant and startling difference from the ones that went before. Neither the PNC nor the PPP is going near to it or mentioning it and, from all appearances, both are distancing themselves from it. That is, other than ...
Read More »PPP’s Irfan Ali appeals to PNCR-led coalition supporters for a hearing
Presidential candidate for the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC), Irfaan Ali on Friday appealed to non-traditional supporters to give him and his party a hearing and eventually cast their ballots for the party that last ruled Guyana for 23 unbroken years. In clear reference to Afro-Guyanese – that segment of the country’s population that has largely supported the People’s National ...
Read More »Gov’t achieved “certain big things” but no guarantee promises won’t be broken again -WPA
The Working People’s Alliance (WPA) on Friday admitted not doing enough to push the government to address failed promises such as constitutional reform, collective bargaining and award of contracts to small contractors, but could offer no guarantees that there would not be a repeat if the governing coalition wins again. Executive Member, Dr. David Hinds said during an ongoing series ...
Read More »OPINION: Presidents and former presidents must be diligent with truth and abandon the injurious
By GHK Lall I have come to associate serial deception as part of the political games played recklessly and injuriously in this country. Yet there has to be some limit; some personal defining line that some of us will not cross, regardless of the media mileage. Or the political and racial leverages that may intrigue and compel others to besmirch ...
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