Dear Editor,
The September 1st 2025, General and Regional Elections are an appointment with destiny for the African Community and the Guyanese nation. The results of these elections will shape the country’s future for a long time. And how the African Youths’ vote is important to the outcome. Are we heading to a perilous future?
Elections and our governance system over the last 60-plus years have left the nation unprepared to deal with the challenges of becoming a Petro-state with a major territorial threat posed by Venezuela. It facilitated the PPP apartheid policies towards the African community and their quest for racial and political domination in the country: a major contradiction that must be resolved if Guyana is to progress and reap the benefits of our newfound wealth
In fairness to young generation readers, to whom this letter is directed, I offer this explanation. I am addressing the African question and the elections deliberately. As a contribution to enhancing the country’s understanding of the political engagement. The PPP and its propaganda machinery/agents long painted me as an African racist, and the majority of their support base has accepted that portrayal of me.
Despite my long history of multi-racial politics and the defense of the Indian community, for which I, Dr David Hinds and other WPA comrades spent jail time for our political convictions. Today, this means nothing to the PPP and its Indian supporters. I make this observation to say I don’t expect my views to have any traction in the Indian community; hence, my target group is the African community. If it proves to capture the attention outside our community, that is good, whether those readers agree with me or not.
African youths are engaging in the upcoming elections, with a political consciousness shaped, living under the PPP political domination of the country from 1992 to the present (minus the five years of the APNU+AFC rule, 2015 to 2020). As the saying goes, this is the Jagdeo/PPP generation; their lives have been a reflection of this reality. Those 28 years of the PPP rule have reduced our community to economic servitude, social degradation, and political vulnerability. Except for the Indigenous community, we are at the bottom of the economic and social ladder. And, if we are not mindful of what we do in the elections, we will end up at the bottom of the political ladder; some will say that we are already there.
To date, the WPA is the only party in the elections with a clear and unquestionable proposition/conviction that the African question is equally important as the national question in the elections. While the uninformed or the politically misinformed and the PPP propaganda agents have attacked us on this matter, the fact is that throughout our existence, the WPA have always been guided by the view that the interest and survival of our ethnic/racial communities cannot be separate from the national imperative.
For us, the destruction of the African, Indian and Indigenous communities is, in essence, the destruction of Guyana. To put it another way, the demise of the African Community will lead to the demise of Guyana. Half of the nation has no viable future when its community has less than 10% of the economy. This represents an existential threat to Africans. Ironically, this is despite the UN Declaration Decade of the People of African Descent. And its mandate to member governments is to correct historic injustices to Africans.
Frankly, African youths, like the rest of society, are unprepared for the challenges posed by these elections. Like the rest of Guyana, they will be exercising the franchise. How they use or don’t use it on September 1st will decide where Guyana goes in the future. Young people 40 and under are the largest section of the voting population. How they vote will determine the election results, whether the PPP or the APNU coalition will win. And the fortunes of the smaller parties.
Unfortunately, too many are not conscious of the power they hold and seem to be engaging in these elections as a choice of personalities rather than the profound challenges facing the nation and inherent in the elections. Simply put, what kind of state will emerge as a result of the elections? And its effects on their lives for decades to come are not fully understood. Objectively, what should be foremost in their minds is African survival in dignity or our being reduced to permanent economic, social and political domination. That is the challenge facing African voters, young and old.
The transformative effect of oil and gas in the hands of the racist apartheid PPP leadership will be a death blow to Africans and Guyana. These insensitive and rootless rulers have put in the historical record their position on the African condition at the UN conference, (the world highest body) saying that our condition is the result of bad choices our ancestors made at the end of enslavement to plant provisions and not rice. This says it all. This was their considered and well-thought-out answer to the African dilemma; for them, the government has no responsibility.
To date, there has been no reversal of their position, and they have the nerve to ask Africans to vote for them by handing out small contracts to clean drains and weed parquets. To save the African community and Guyana, the PPP has to be defeated and removed from office. To achieve this goal, Africans have only one sensible choice, and that is to vote for the APNU coalition. Any other way is a vote for the PPP – and African destruction. This is the reality.
In the run-up to the local government elections, the WPA and I called on Africans to get battle ready and turn the elections into an African and Guyanese uprising to address all the economic, social, political and election matters. The African masses’ consciousness was transformed by the call from weakness to strength, and the section of our young people that is giving us the most push back in these elections was ready. The call went unanswered by the African collective leadership, denying them of what would have been their only major political engagement in their lives. A chance to expressed our collective strength as a community. No resistance! No consciousness. The consequence of this failure is obvious: a generation that knows no political battle.
All is not lost. In this General and Regional elections contest, I once again called on Africans to get battle-ready, shake off the present divisions and come out and vote for the APNU. Any African voter who has not reached this consciousness is not a soldier or one who is not battle-ready. It is not too late.
Yours truly,
Tacuma Ogunseye.
