The party that has held power for nearly three decades still cannot keep water out of people’s living rooms

Dear Editor,

I refer to a propaganda piece in the newspapers from one Tilokee Depoo captioned `Flooding Demands Facts, Not Political Theatre.’ Yet his entire opinion piece is precisely the latter—a sanitized, selective defence of a government that has presided over two decades of unbroken hydrological failure.

Let me be unequivocal: this Cde. Depoo does not know what he is talking about. His argument collapses under the weight of what Guyanese have endured since the catastrophic floods of 2005—a tragedy that should have been a permanent wake-up call, not a forgotten benchmark.

The 2005 floods were not a starting line; they were an indictment

The 2005 floods submerged 85% of Georgetown and vast swaths of coastal Guyana, causing over US$465 million in damage—nearly 60% of the national budget at the time. That disaster laid bare every single drainage and sea defence vulnerability that Cde. Depoo now treats as a timeless, unavoidable curse. The response should have been a national Marshall Plan for water management since then. Instead, Guyanese have watched, for 21 years, as the same neighbourhoods, the same canals, the same kokers, and the same pumps fail with metronomic regularity—2005, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2023, and now 2026.

“The problem did not begin in 2020” — A tired, dishonest dodge

Cde. Depoo’s central thesis—that the PPP/C should not be solely blamed because APNU also failed—is a logical fallacy masquerading as nuance. The PPP/C has been in power for 28 of the last 33 years, including uninterrupted governance from 1992 to 2015 and again from 2020 to 2026. To deflect responsibility by pointing to APNU’s five-year tenure is not only pathetic, it is a confession:  the party that has held the levers of power for nearly three decades still cannot keep water out of people’s living rooms and is using these emergencies to create opportunities for wholesale theft of the people’s assets.

If APNU failed, that is a condemnation of them. But for the PPP/C to still be pointing at a five-year opposition gap while drowning in its own third decade of poor governance is an embarrassment. At what point does responsibility become yours? After 30 years? 40? Never?

“51 Pumps Deployed” — A statistic without substance

Cde. Depoo cites 51 pumps deployed as evidence of “visible government action.” Let me translate that for Guyanese who have actually lived through these floods: 51 pumps means the system was already broken before the rain started. A functional drainage system does not require emergency pump scrambles every time the Atlantic looks sideways. A functional system prevents the crisis. What Guyanese have is a reactive, photo-op-driven disaster management model where ministers tour flooded neighborhoods in rubber boots while families watch their valuable assets sink under water during the dark of night after one night of rain. Only yesterday again there was flooding on June 15, 2026.

The regional weather excuse is an apology, not an argument

Blaming regional rainfall patterns or flooding in Brazil and Trinidad is a geopolitical dodge. Yes, the Caribbean is experiencing intensifying climate impacts. That is precisely why proactive investment over the past two decades—not emergency pump deployments in 2026—was required. Guyana now bills itself as the world’s fastest-growing economy, with oil revenues flowing into the billions. Yet the same drainage infrastructure built by the Dutch centuries ago and patched by the British remains the backbone of coastal defence. Where is the modern, climate-resilient drainage system? Where are the upgraded sluices? Where is the long-term dredging programme? Billions in oil money, and people in Mahaica and Mahaicony are still asking why their kitchen floor is a pond.

The real political theatre

Cde. Depoo accuses APNU and WIN of political theatre. But the true performance is watching a government-aligned economist pen a 700-word essay explaining why flooding is actually very complicated, and why voters should lower their expectations. Guyanese do not need a lecture on “history and context.” They lived it. They need dry homes, functional drains, and leaders in government who treat water management as a national security priority—not a press release opportunity.

Final word to Cde. Depoo

You wrote: “Honest criticism must also admit history and context.” Fine. Here is the honest context: For 21 years, since 2005, through successive PPP/C and APNU administrations, the fundamental drainage and sea defence architecture of this country has remained pathetically inadequate. The difference is that one party has been in charge for the overwhelming majority of those years and now sits on oil wealth that could have transformed this sector. Instead, we get 51 pumps and a lecture about Brazil’s rain.

That is not governance. That is negligence wearing a tie.

Yours faithfully,

Surujdai Juglall