Coil : Issues and the voting.

(Vidyaratha Kissoon)
Less than two months to elections and people who want to vote on issues and not race are probably wondering when the two main political parties will identify issues and make proposals for them. Or maybe they have done so and people do not know. Or maybe there are thousands of issues so better not to pick and choose or not get into too much details in case you win the elections and somebody will remind you of the things which you said you would do.

It is difficult to process the promises of the PPP/C – since they had some years to deal with many issues and nobody knows what will change. APNU+AFC might have had different approaches to issues and now that they are together, it is not clear how they plan to resolve any differences so for the time being there might be a few APNU-AFC positions.

Here are a few issues which I thought were relevant – all this could change of course :-

ISSUE	APNU + AFC/APNU – AFC	PPP/C
Mosquitoes	No promises yet	Fogging sometimes. No other promises
Rice	Rice in trouble. Rice farmers not being paid. Nothing about rice flour though	Rice is amazing. Value added things like cereal, but no rice flour and Venezuela will buy rice from us
Oil	Hope when we find the oil, Venezuela don’t come and take it away and the USA will intervene. Nothing yet about cheap oil from Venezuela.	Hope when we find the oil, Venezuela don’t come and take it away and the USA will intervene but we hope to get cheap oil from Venezuela
Venezuela	Not a blade of grass	Not a blade of grass
Burnham	Depends is who and where, but no poster messages and so about Sophia Declaration except from die hards	If you do not vote for us, Burnham coming back
Cheddi	Cheddi was a good man , PPP/C is not Cheddi party any more.	For the sake of Cheddi, vote for us. We will cuss anyone including his family who say we not like Cheddi.
Hoyte	Everytime they talk about Burnham, we will talk about Hoyte and how Hoyte was er.. different from Burnham	We will pretend that the seven years of Hoyte did not exist
Sexual Offences	Oh. We condemn rapists, especially those in the other political parties. We have some people who have allegations/ charges which not been resolved rumblings, women don’t go near to on their own, but every vote counts.	Oh. We condemn rapists, especially those in the other political parties. We have some people who have allegations/ charges which not been resolved rumblings, women don’t go near to on their own, but every vote counts. On our website we talk randomly about ‘sex Offences act’.
Housing	Need to sort out how people get the house lots. Some people waiting. Our supporters use homeless in campaign memes	Thousands of house lots and houses given away and built. Homeless don’t want to go to shelters
Forestry	Nothing yet	LCDS /Bai Shin Lin/ Vaitarna/ etc etc
Amaila Falls	Is a go	Is a go
Marriott	Already here. AFC – get local investors. APNU nothing yet.	Is a crowning achievement.
Gold/Bauxite	Is a go/Linden	Is a go/Not saving Linden
Sugar	Privatise/ close down/ save	Will not collapse, we will bail out always. We will not talk about Skeldon Factory
Environment	er.. oh yes, yall must please carry yall rubbish home. People who litter vote for us.	er.. oh yes, yall must please carry yall rubbish home. People who litter vote for us .
Crime	Reform police, Use Disciplined Services Commission recommendations, etc	15 for 2015 – 911 is a promise, has been for some years ,
Racism	The other party is racial, we are not, we have people of all races	The other party is racial, we are not, we have people of all races
Suicide Prevention	AFC Cathy Hughes – do not make it political issue, need a strategy	– Statistics are wrong. Less people killing themselves – No suicide hotline (Police did want to do it but well, as 911 shows, who can imagine if hotline will work and not in 15 for 2015.) – We have nice strategy somewhere
Ganja	Anti-ganja Legislation will be reviewed.	Zero tolerance for ganja.
Rum	Keep it flowing	Keep it flowing
Illiteracy	No promises yet	No promises yet
Young people	er.. not sure if Clinton Urling will come on board. GYSM and others are .. well…there.. We have no objections to GNYC though	PYO is visible, active especially agianst the GNYC . Irfaan Ali and Kwame McKoy are the multi-ethnic role models for young people to follow.
Beating children ?	We committed to human rights but children don’t vote for us, the people who beat them do. Some of us don’t like beating children but we want the people who beat children to vote for us.	We committed to human rights but children don’t vote for us, the people who beat them do. Some of us don’t like beating children but but we want the people who beat children to vote for us
Gay rights ?	We committed to human rights, but gays will have to wait – we do not discriminate against gays , especially the ones who are active in our political parties	We committed to human rights, but gays will have to wait – we do not discriminate against gays , especially the ones who are active in our political party
Happiness	Guyanese are not happy – Happy people do not kill themselves or others.	73% of Guyanese are happy due to PPP.
Presidential attire	Mr Granger in nice shirt and pants/ Shirt jac suit Limited suit and tie in Guyana though. Official pictures have him in shirt without tie. Cde Nagamootoo in suit everywhere Not sure if suits are locally tailored or foreign imports No word yet if local designers have been asked to contribute the campaign wardrobes to promote local industry.	Cde Jagdeo in nice suits and fashionable clothes. Lots of black and dark colours. Cde Ramotar in nice suits, official photos have him in suit and tie Cde Harper in nice women suits Not sure if suits are locally tailored or foreign imports. No word yet if local designers have been asked to contribute the campaign wardrobes to promote local industry.

What other issues do you think are important in our elections?