In Kaieteur News, Feb 2nd, 2017, Peeping Tom rightly points out that the neo-liberal capitalist model, first adopted by Desmond Hoyte in 1985, and adopted by successive governments of Guyana since then, including the current APNU+AFC government, “failed Guyana thirty years ago and it will fail Guyana again. It is not suited to help redress inequality in Guyana. Instead the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer”.
Actually, it has failed not only in Guyana but in every country where it has been implemented or imposed. The vote for Trump in the USA was in large part a vote against neo-liberal economics. Peeping Tom states that some have tried to rebrand the neo-liberal project as an “Economic Recovery Programme (ERP), but points out that “for the working poor, this was no recovery”, and that in Guyana, the so-called Economic Recovery Programme(ERP)”battered the working class, widened the gap between the rich and the poor and caused a collapse of the artisan economy …”
As I read Peeping Tom’s article, which sounded like it came straight out of Organization for the Victory of the People’s Manifesto, I was excited. Yes, finally Guyanese are starting to understand that we must break with this destructive neo-liberal agenda. However, my excitement was short lived as I read on. Peeping Tom further states that the present government has good reason to stick with this model because, “Its critics are not offering an alternative to neo-liberal economics”. This is untrue. I can tell Peeping Tom that I have not only been consistently critical and outspoken about the devastation caused by this anti-poor and anti-working class economic model since its imposition on the Guyanese people by imperialist powers and their agencies, but I have also proposed a comprehensive alternative economic and political arrangement, based on years of study and extensive national and international political experience.
Since the time of Desmond Hoyte’s government, throughout the years of the PPP government, (when sadly, even Cheddi Jagan, despite his Marxist and anti-imperialist ideological convictions, succumbed to neo-liberalism under pressure from external forces), and most recently, as Chairperson of Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP), I have campaigned to rid my country of this scourge. OVP’s manifesto, and almost all of our publications, have not only provided a clear and comprehensive critique of the neo-liberal project, but also offered a clear alternative.
Unfortunately, the APNU+AFC government has chosen to continue with this failed trajectory, and cannot be advised. Their inability to break with neo-liberalism is not due to critics of this model failing to offer an alternative, as Peeping Tom would have us believe. Instead, it is due to this government’s arrogance, lack of vision, ineptness and their inability to grasp current global political and economic dynamics.
Although APNU+AFC have spoken a great deal about inclusiveness, their actions suggest otherwise. Despite the leadership and members of Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP) having joined forces with the PNC/R on numerous occasions to resist the PPP’s reign of terror, and despite having actively campaigned during the 2015 elections for Guyanese to give their presidential vote to APNU+AFC, while OVP only contested the regional vote in Region 4, we have been deliberately omitted from forums regarding Guyana’s future. It is not that there are no alternatives being offered, the problem is that alternative and dissenting views are being excluded and censored.
Democracy and “electocracy” are two different things. Guyana needs real democracy – both political and economic. We do not need any more arrogant elected dictatorships. What we need is to bring together all those who are qualified to discuss the way forward, in an attempt to articulate a workable alternative to the failed neo-liberal economic project. Together, and without interference from external powers, we must formulate an effective economic policy that can deliver economic justice to all Guyanese, and begin the long road to rebuilding our broken and ravaged nation. In unity and struggle,
Gerald A. Perreira
Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP)