See full release from the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU):
The APNU Coalition has listened to the Facebook presentation yesterday, Sunday, 27th July 2025, by PPP presidential candidate Irfaan Ali on poverty reduction. Not surprisingly, his so-called plan contains a hodgepodge of failed measures and empty catchphrases. Not surprisingly, it is devoid of a credible development plan with specific targets, deadlines, and specific indicators of a high quality of life.
Not surprisingly, he offers no solutions to stem the rampant tide of corruption, financial mismanagement, and government incompetence that has wasted hundreds of billions of dollars of our oil revenues. As most Guyanese can attest, the last five years under the PPP have produced worsening living standards, high and rising cost of living, growing income and food poverty, and widespread national despair among citizens.
Irfaan Ali’s Facebook presentation clearly exposed the fact that the PPP has nothing new to offer. In our people-centred development strategy, we will eliminate poverty and boost living standards by the end of our first term by ensuring all Guyanese households get a livable income and all Guyanese workers earn a living wage. We will quantify and guarantee these outcomes through a range of policies and programs that will lead to higher employment and self-employment, increased wages, zero to low personal income taxes, cash transfers (including public assistance and school vouchers), subsidies for households (such as for utilities, rent, mortgage cooking gas, etc), and higher returns for owners and investors in micro-to-large businesses.
This higher amount of income in the hands of Guyanese, along with our other facilitative policies, will produce a dynamic demand-driven economy that will lead to increasing and sustainable opportunities for Guyanese to earn more and achieve economic security.
We will use the occasion of our manifesto launch to restate the details of our plan. The APNU Coalition recognises that while eliminating poverty is a critical goal, our ultimate destination is to guarantee all Guyanese a high quality of life. We will work therefore, to establish a comprehensive social protection system, provide top-class social services, build better communities, create an opportunity society, promote equity and social justice, enhance good governance and ethnic relations, and meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals. As part of this effort, we will expand the Bureau of Statistics to produce hard data to guide policy formulation and to measure progress. The quality of health care, for example, must not be an abstract notion but must be quantified through such indicators as the number of patients per doctor or nurse, or the waiting time for treatment. Guyanese have had enough of the PPP.
No amount of pretentious speech-making by Irfaan Ali can save it from defeat on September 1.
