Fellow Guyanese!
New Year’s Greetings to all at home and in the Diaspora! I join you in welcoming 2025 and hope you are observing or celebrating the Yuletide season as best as you could, since incompetence has resulted in many people being unable to collect the cash grant that the Opposition pressured the government to deliver. It was made worse by the stingy 10 percent increase in salaries.
We welcome 2025, the New Year in which as individuals, families, and a nation, we have far-reaching and life-changing decisions to make. These decisions will determine whether most Guyanese will continue in poverty and struggle to eke out a living or whether we all can soon enjoy a high standard of living and improved quality of life. The actions of the government do not offer hope. In the circumstance, our decisions will decide whether as a country, we will remain in the present social, economic, and political morass or whether we can finally begin a truly transformative process of nation-building and elevating our quality of life. Let us therefore sweep out the old and usher in the new and better. Let us choose 2025 as the year when we RESCUE AND TRANSFORM GUYANA.
The past year has exposed the PPP government as incompetent, corrupt, and divisive and evvel they remain in office there is no hope for improved management of the affairs of our country, lowering the cost of living, and reducing poverty. In this very bleak situation, there is no path to satisfaction, happiness, and prosperity under the PPP regime. There is no doubt that if Guyana is to grow, the PPP must go.
After several oil budgets, it is clearer now than ever that the PPP is incapable of providing, let alone guaranteeing, the necessities and essentials for the comfortable life we have long aspired to have and rightly deserve. Not only is the PPP incompetent, heartless, and corrupt, but they also believe that citizens must forever be dependent and slavishly beholden to them.
Therefore, ending food and financial poverty, ensuring economic security, ushering in good governance, and providing opportunities and pathways for independence and prosperity are neither in the PPP’s vision nor intention. Their aim is to have a dependent population. We offer the Guyanese people a higher quality life. Such development goals run counter to PPP’s obsession to control, dominate and occupy every conceivable space in our society.
The PPP has been in government for 27 years of the last 32 years. We have witnessed and experienced enough trials and tribulations. As far as our livelihoods, lifestyles, and lives are concerned, nothing meaningful will change if the PPP continues to be in government. The government is aware that most Guyanese know they are enriching themselves at the expense of our people. They are desperate and will splash around our country’s God-given oil revenues to bribe, manipulate, and deceive.
Expect, therefore, another largest-ever budget in 2025 with little or nothing in it for the average Guyanese. Expect impulsive expenditures with no plans. Expect to hear about hundreds of billions to be spent on infrastructure, while the society becomes more lawless and insecure, blackouts will continue, unsatisfactory quality healthcare, education, water and low wages and salaries will continue to be the order of the day. Guyana now has the money. What it needs is a competent government. We offer you that competence.
Guyanese are not fooled by these spending splurges. People know their standard of living and quality of life have not improved and will remain the same. They know that the high cost of living will still be a burden. Kitchen-table economics will remain the same. They know that with the obvious exceptions, their purses, wallets, and bank accounts will not change, and they will continue to live from hisse cheque to hisse cheque, even with the abundance of oil money.
They know that most of the oil revenues will not reach them but go to the PPP’s friends, families, and favorites. This is even more so since the government has already announced that teachers, public servants, and other government employees will get a measly 8% salary increase and that pensioners an increase of only $6,000 (a miserable $200 a day) in 2025.The government by already offering these ridiculous and unacceptable increases has made it clear to all and sundry that, it is a government that has no intention, let alone a plan, to lift the lower class and expand the middle class.
Fellow Guyanese, let us in 2025 duly recognise and exercise our power to rescue and transform our country. Let us recognize and exercise our power to collectively chart a new course that puts people first and at the center of development. We offer you our People-Centered Development Strategy (PCDS) that guarantees you a high quality of life. Accordingly, let us ensure that the election and other systems through which we can exercise that power are up to the required standard of accuracy and credibility. In this regard, we, in the opposition, will be redoubling our efforts to ensure the voters list and the verification of the identities of voters can win your confidence and trust. We will continue to press for biometrics and a clean voters list.
Budget 2025 must be the PPP government’s last national budget. The PPP had five years, during which time, it wasted and plundered our oil revenues. It has also had twenty-three years before, and it has failed to deliver any betterment in our living standard and quality of life. We are all the victims and witnesses of this mismanagement of our country’s resources. The government is a colossal failure.
In 2025, we in the PNCR/APNU will intensify our efforts to publicize our alternative plan of development for individuals, families, and the nation. We will more widely spread the word on how we will put oil money in your hands where it belongs by right. We will more effectively spread the word on how we will end poverty and economic insecurity.
We will be taking the message countrywide on our plan to ensure that each household can be guaranteed a livable monthly income through large increases in wages and pensions, through subsidies on rent, mortgage and utilities payments, through child allowances, through raising the tax-free threshold to $400,000 per month, through a student stipend for university and other post-secondary students, and through direct cash grants, the latter devoid of the disrespect, confusion and mayhem that have accompanied the present cash grant distribution.
We will be taking the message countrywide on how we will make it easy for small to large businesses to startup and flourish in Guyana through such measures as an expanded scheme of small business loans and grants, through the creation of a development and investment bank for large enterprises, through the reduction of red tape and corruption, through new infrastructure targeted at increasing productive capacity, and through the reduction of the costs of production.
We will be taking the message countrywide on reducing corruption and wasteful government spending through such measures as revamping the public procurement system and increasing transparency and accountability in government.
In 2025, you will be hearing more from us on our ideas to improve race relations and inclusive politics, ensure good governance, provide better social services, increase happiness, prosperity, and satisfaction, and to lift the quality of life of all citizens.
Fellow Guyanese sisters and brothers, as we face the New Year, we in the PNCR/APNU continue working on your behalf. As the current opposition, we will keep the pressure on the government by defending and protecting your rights, freedoms, and entitlements. We will continue to expose PPP corruption, incompetence, divisiveness, and deception wherever they surface. As the next government, we stand ready to transform Guyana and the lives of all Guyanese.
As we face the challenges of life in Guyana, we must remain steadfast and united in defense of our country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. PNCR/APNU will continue to advocate for concerted diplomatic initiatives and outreaches to countries and international organizations around the world even as we await the outcome of our case before the ICJ.
Be hopeful. Stay strong. Stand ready! This is the year for change! A higher quality life is coming under the PNCR/APNU.
2025 is the year when we will make the change to a PEOPLE CENTRED better, brighter, and more harmonious Guyana in which our oil resources help the people directly and indirectly.
Happy New Year!
LET US RESCUE AND TRANSFORM GUYANA IN 2025!