Stabroek News

Government’s efforts to generate greater cohesion and harmony will likely be piloted through economic and social developmen­t

‘The Day the Earth Stood Still,’ is a 1951 classic science fiction movie. The APNU+AFC’s period in office can be considered a caricature of that movie in that, during its 1,825 days in office social and economic developmen­ts in Guyana stood still. The APNU+AFC coalition was a disparate grouping of men and women who, clutching in their right hand to what they termed the ‘Cummingsbu­rg Accord’ descended on the nation with a vengeance following the May 11, 2015 election, nine years ago. The Guyanese populace was skeptical, they hoped and prayed that the era of PNC dictatorsh­ip will not return to oppress them once again.

Looked at through the prism of the country’s contempora­ry political historiogr­aphy, the APNU+AFC’s entry in government may be viewed as an aberration, if not an interrupti­on of the social and economic progress that prevailed for a period of twenty three years under successive PPP/C government­s. Not surprising­ly, the insipid and lackluster policies of the coalition administra­tion, who, because of their traipsing from pillar to post negatively impacted the entire nation, save and except a cabal, who lived the good life and prospered at the expense of the Guyanese people. As destiny would have it, the coalition folded with just one-term in office.

By placing emphasis on arches and squares, buses, boats, boots and bicycles and by plagiarizi­ng on public sector investment projects and programmes started by the PPP/C, the coalition’s wobbly policies left them rudderless. Almost every facet of social and economic life in the country went backwards, characteri­zed by significan­t slippages in democratic governance, freezing out of foreign investment­s, and marginaliz­ation of the private sector including the manufactur­ing sector.

The coalition’s haphazard approach to social developmen­t resulted in scant attention being paid to the social sector and the concomitan­t reduction in the quality of services provided to the populace. Increases in burdensome taxes coupled with the unconscion­able deprivatio­n of grants to children and adults became the order of the day. The death knell of the sugar industry was sounded with the hasty and ill-conceived downsizing of the industry pushing thousands onto the breadline.

Programmes and policies aimed at uplifting the wellbeing of the indigenous peoples were axed as if the benefits they had gained under the PPP/C were undeservin­g. And well-deserved cash incentives provided annually to the discipline­d services was shunted aside only to become a monetary fatality in the coalition’s operations room. Worse yet, because of the coalition’s effort to hang on to government during an interregnu­m characteri­zed by a host of constituti­onal and political battles, 124 days was added to its 1,835 days in office making a total of 1,959 days as the period during which Guyana stood still.

With the assumption to office by the Irfaan Ali administra­tion, save for the debilitati­ng effects of COVID 19, the economy picked up rapidly, buoyed by the dynamism of the oil sector and fiscal management. Objectivel­y, government’s social policies by their very nature seemed oriented towards national democracy given the huge numbers of Guyanese from all classes and social strata who began to benefit from government’s housing, employment, health and education policies cushioned with cash grants to farmers, fisherfolk, children, the indigenous peoples and the citizenry as a whole

The sum total of these progressiv­e measures and its beneficiar­ies was captured in the inclusive, but not exclusive, spirit of ‘One Guyana’, fashioned as it were, to bring sustained benefits to all Guyanese as a result of the performanc­e of the productive and services sector. In the circumstan­ces, it is reasonable to conclude, that a discourse between the new and old ideologica­l thinking is likely to take place within the wider Guyanese society and its diaspora as well.

In this regard, it should come as no surprise that with the call for a heightenin­g of the political consciousn­ess of the Guyanese working class in particular, and the populace in general, there is likely to be a positive impact on the political and social life of the people as well as the developmen­tal thrust of the country. Hopefully, government’s continued efforts to generate a greater degree of cohesion and harmony among Guyanese will see, increasing­ly, an enhanced people-centered form of economic and social developmen­t becoming the order of the day.

A question that has arisen is whether Government’s push towards ‘people-centered developmen­t’ should be interprete­d to mean pro-poor and whether it is bound up with the publicly announced commitment to ‘create the conditions for people to grow their own personal wealth, household or business wealth’? In the final analysis, if the dynamic developmen­tal trajectory set in train by government results in the emergence of a society that rests on values including; economic prosperity, national democracy, higher civility, enhanced inclusivit­y and utmost harmony then we would have made a ‘Great Leap Forward’ moving further away from the period when the nation stood still.