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…was always secretly working for PPP
Lennox Gasper, a former A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) Councilor on the Linden Mayor and Town Council has resigned from the People’s National Congress/Reform (PNC/R) citing allegations that the coalition’s attempted to rig the 2020 Elections, but PNC/R Executive Member Aubrey Norton said Gasper is an opportunist who had been secretly working the PPP/C.
“Lennox Gasper was no real PNCR,” Norton said on Friday even as news surfaced that the ex-town councilor had officially tendered his resignation.
The PNC/R Executive Member said Gasper joined the party in 2016 after the APNU+AFC won the 2015 General and Regional Elections, and went unto becoming a Councillor in 2016. However, he lost his seat on the Council in the 2018 Local Government Elections to another APNU Candidate for the constituency for which he was representing.
“The fact is he was beaten. As soon as the APNU+AFC lost power Jasper became part of a PPP front group called the Think Tank and was operating with them since then under the direction of Juan Edghill. He is clearly opportunistic and has no interest in the development of Linden,” the PNC/R Executive said.
In his lengthy Letter of Resignation to PNC/R General Secretary, Amna Ally on March 3, 2021, said he had joined the party with the intention of crafting a governance and development agenda to meet the needs of the people of his town and by extension the region.
“I was convinced that the Coalition of APNU+AFC was going to change the political culture of governance, in the interest of transitioning the country to a new dispensation of accountability in development, with high hopes that all citizens would have been given a chance at the promised ‘good life’. Unfortunately, this was not to be,” Gasper said.
He added: “I was also in high hopes that the Coalition would have implemented a rapid-development rescue plan for Linden, given that the party’s narrative over the 23 years of PPP/C rule was that Linden had been deliberately neglected and therefore underdeveloped. This too was not to be.”
According to him, the pleas of Lindeners for the creation of jobs in the mining town felt on deaf ears. With envy in their eyes, he said they watched other newer towns prioritized by the David Granger Administration.
“The choice of the Executive in 2015 to reward itself with a hefty salary increase as one of the first acts of governance was the ominous signal that we all should have heeded. While we waited and pleaded, scores of new taxes were hurled our way instead of an easing of our burdens. With lies, deception and bullyism, the majority party in the coalition (PNC-R) controlled the narrative in Linden and threatened to punish any local leader who dared to criticize its actions/inactions,” Gasper said.
With no facts or evidence to support his contention, Gasper alleged that hundreds of thousands of people across the country are now saddled in debt due to the rising costs of living due to the “albatross of new taxes placed around the necks of the working and middle class.”
Gasper he had intended to serve his local constituency, town and country without fear or favor, affection or ill will but he could not deliver due to the constraints of “control freakism” imposed by the PNCR, and the “heartless non-provision” of resources by the coalition government.
“Notwithstanding those developments and the disgraceful abandonment of my town, the strong hold of the PNC/R, I campaigned hard for the Coalition again in 2020, hoping that with another term, our frustrations on the ground would be addressed and the shortcomings in governance rectified.
This too was not to be. The party suffered a devastating defeat at those elections fair and square but chose instead to revert to its old gestapo tactics of attempting to rig the results in its favour, dragging our hard-won democracy through the gutters for five long months. Throughout this period, the membership was blatantly lied to, in a web of deception and manipulation without any transparent access to the Statement of Polls, which would have most certainly proved otherwise, had they been revealed,” Gasper said.
He said March 2 not only marked one year since the General and Regional Elections were held in Guyana but reminded Guyanese of the vicious attack on their democracy by the Coalition.
“I am fully persuaded that the actions of the PNC led Coalition in the aftermath of the 2020 general and regional elections were born out of a selfish and unbridled lust for power, without any regard for the interests of Guyana and its citizens. It was indeed an unbearably frightening experience that after 23 in opposition, the PNCR under the coalition banner was barefacedly seeking to rig the elections in full view of Guyanese and the rest of the world,” he posited.
He added: “Not surprisingly and true to form, even as the country reflects this week on the dreadful events post March 2, 2020, the opposition members of Parliament engaged in the most distasteful tactics to derail the passage of this year’s budget in the National Assembly, openly trampling on established Parliamentary protocols and outrightly disrespecting the Speaker of the House.”
The protest in the National Assembly this last week stemmed from an alleged physical assault on APNU+AFC Member of Parliament, Tabitha Sarabo-Halley on the corridors of the Arthur Chung Conference Centre by Minister Kwame McCoy but Gasper offered no condemnation.
After bashing the party, he expressed gratitude for the opportunity he was given to serve on the Linden Town Council. While Gasper tendered his resignation on March 3, Village Voice News understands that he had been working directly with the Minister within the Office of the Prime Minister, Kwame McCoy since the change in Administration in 2020.
