The People’s Progressive Party has declared that the results of the just concluded Local Government Elections ought to be seen as a referendum on the nine-month old APNU+AFC government, although the APNU+AFC has held on to all of its bases and the PPP has done the same.
The party believes it has been able to rally its support base and could therefore boast of winning the most local authority areas, although many of those areas fall within its usual support base and several were uncontested.
Still, the General Secretary of the PPP is claiming victory and at his Monday morning press conference he made specific reference about the APNU+AFC not contesting several constituencies in the Berbice area and doing bad in the ones that it contested in.
He said since the new government has taken office, farmers and the farming community have been treated badly and the results from those areas showcase the frustration of the residents.
“It exposes the hypocrisy of wanting Berbice to be the food basket but on the other hand, doing so poorly in respect to the support by the farming community. But that is because of the way they treat the farmers, the rice farmers and the sugar workers. So the chickens are now coming home to roast not to roost”, Mr. Rohee said.
Sharing the press conference with Mr. Rohee was senior party member, Ganga Persaud, who made it clear that the 71 local authority elections ought to be seen as 71 different elections and not thrown together.
He said the local elections cannot and ought not be compared to the general elections because for the local elections, “there are 71 different elections as against the general and the regional”.
“If you are going to analyze local government elections and the showing of political parties or groups, that has to be done based on the understanding that these elections are separate, there are 71 different elections”, Persaud affirmed.
He also reminded that for the general elections, the turn out was over 70% while for the just concluded local government elections, the turn out was below 40%.
The Diplomatic community has already heralded the return of the elections and described the local government elections as free and fair.
The PPP General Secretary, Clement Rohee, said the party is still to make a determination about whether the elections could really be considered free and fair. He said the party has to await information from its polling agents.
The APNU+AFC has picked up most of the municipalities while the PPP has picked up most of the Neighbourhood Democratic Council.
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