General Secretary of the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP) Dr Bharrat Jagdeo has refuted claims that the party’s 32nd Congress was funded by taxpayers’ money. During his weekly press conference on Thursday, he noted that several fundraisers and other initiatives were rolled out ahead of the Congress to raise money for the event.
“Our Congress was funded entirely by party funds and not State money. We’re not the PNC that used to do all of these things, we are a different party,” he said.
Jagdeo alluded to Bar-B-Ques hosted by the party and volunteer work as two ways in which the successful event was pulled off.
The Congress was hosted from May 3-5 at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre. There, the party members and delegates elected a new Central Committee which then re-elected Jagdeo to serve as the General Secretary as the party prepares for the 2025 General and Regional Elections.
Jagdeo said during the three days, the deliberations were fruitful and surrounded several topics including corruption, the petroleum sector, equitable distribution of resources, job creation, health, housing, local government, the rebuilding of the youth and women’s arms of the party, public relations and much more.
Confident of a win come 2025, Jagdeo said: “Apart from positioning the People’s Progressive Party to win the next elections, re-energising its activists and supporters…[and] bringing people together, [this Congress] has also caused a major unhinging of the Opposition.”
He pointed to several articles, ads and other materials churned out by Opposition members criticising the PPP since its Congress, and promised to tackle those criticisms head-on.
“We are going to have a bulldozer to come down on the heads of those who distort our history, who will lie about us, who try to divide our people along racial lines…we have allowed that to happen as a party and for too long we have allowed them to hold back this country and the development of Guyana, so we are not going to be apologetic about that,” Jagdeo emphasised.
