During his press conference today, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and Vice President, boasted about the party’s diverse range of candidates for the recent Local Government Elections (LGE).
Responding to opposition claims that the party lacks diversity, Jagdeo provided a detailed breakdown of the candidates. Out of the 2020 candidates, he said, 1161 were men and 859 were women. In terms of age, the party had 613 candidates between the ages of 18-35, 691 between the ages of 36-49, and 716 over the age of 50. Additionally, of all the candidates, 341 were Afro-Guyanese, 84 were Amerindians, 187 were mixed, and 1,408 were Indo-Guyanese.
As he highlighted the ethnic, gender, and age diversity of the party’s candidate list across the country, he stated, “We can do this by every local government area that we are contesting. You can see the ethnic breakdown, the gender breakdown- age of our list.” He also compared the diversity of PPP’s candidate list to that of the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) party. According to Jagdeo, “Now when you look at the APNU’s list. APNU’s list lack diversity in almost every area. This is a party that has been talking about it is fighting racism. It used to peddle the fallacy that they’re the multiethnic coalition. Well this coalition (APNU), if you look at their list, in almost every area it is probably over 98% afro Guyanese alone”.
Furthermore, he referred to APNU as a dying party that has always promoted racism but has ironically been the “loudest” about the issue of racism in Guyana’s political arena.
He admitted that when his party was in the opposition, it became aware of some level of under-representation of Afro-Guyanese, openly acknowledged it, and promised to address it. They have since fixed the issue, he said, as the party was adamant to ensure their is diversification in its membership.
