It’s one of those weeks for me – as the more discerning might easily realise.
I mean my reluctance to write on all the current issues deemed as being “of national and international significance”. You know my unjustified impatience: I try not to contribute to what everyone else and his cousin are writing about in our local print media. Unavoidable? Ho-Hum.
So let me, like the OP’s John Da Silva, remind you of what the post- 1992 – Jagan-Hinds-Jagan-Jagdeo governments had to face even as they attempted to govern. And it is not that I’m soliciting sympathy for those administrations. Perhaps some understanding and empathy. But it was they who craved the “job” at every election since. However, even though many governments – including the People’s National Congress’ (PNC) administrations over twenty-eight years-faced, and face similar challenges, its is my view that the PPP/C governments have been handed more than their fair share in their fifteen-plus years so far. Recall the challenges, the burdens, and even unprecedented disasters.
Challenges, destabilisation, setbacks
Just five years after regaining the corridors of power since the PNC grip (1964-1992) had to be loosened, the charismatic, perhaps iconic leader of the Party, Dr Cheddi Jagan died. Like the PNC, twelve years earlier (in 1985) the PPP almost “new” in government, had to take the deepest of political breaths before moving on – in a challenging, then hostile environment.
Came the December 1997 elections then all hell seem to break loose on this then still innocent land.
The PPP/C won but the country lost. Opposition-led protests demonstrations and street terror welcomed 1998. Janet Jagan’s government was challenged severely. The CARICOM and international community intervened much. Substantially, even though the government was vindicated against the false claim of electoral fraud, a charming High Court Judge vitiated the ’97 elections results. Remember that word? In any case that was one unprecedented hurdle constructed in front of a government still trying to manage the economy, building infrastructure and facilities – at least to prevent rats from biting babies’ fingers at hospitals as once actually obtained. No wonder little Suriname chased us away from our own river.
The government tried, despite being badgered and beleaguered every week. Rampant anti-government telemedia politicians” raped their freedom of expression to incite. “Kith-and-kin were appealed to, to light “slow fire” and “mo fire”.
2001 ushered in, around the globe, the spectre of international terrorism as never before when the USA was attacked brazenly. Back in poor old Guyana the 2002 Mash Day jail break, so well organized, then supported, also ushered in an unprecedented criminal enterprise from which this country seems unable to recover.
Meanwhile, the PPP was back in power in 2001 also, but crime sprees, murders, kidnappings, cocaine trafficking, suspension and withdrawals of officials’ American visas to travel and new-manifestations of terror, within the allegations of death squads and political support for the terror, ensured that Guyana’s past innocence was lost forever. Perhaps the Opposition gloated but young Jagdeo’s administrations survived.
Mo’ Fiah – and floods
Crime – its new deadly face – was entrenched amidst police and army failures and political and governmental incompetence and intransigence which saw an administration relying on political arithmetic instead of either facing down criminal threats in a structured strategy or engaging non-government minds to assist the nation.
The Great Flood of January 2005 seemed to be poisoned icing on a putrid political cake. By and large, because this unprecedented natural disaster affected all, the usual political gamesmanship, though it surfaced, was submerged. Frankly Speaking, the government came out favourably in the short term but still falters miserably in the longer context.
Well, the murder of a serving Minister chilled the Administration and the nation. Regional and municipal ineptitude mirrored economic failure and mis-management.
Sustained foreign investment was in theory and on paper only as even the European Union betrayed past and current economic agreements to further frustrate little Guyana.
So why my litany of woes above? It is to remind and illustrate that the PPP/C was largely under siege since around 1997. One decade of uncompromising politics to stifle a nation’s development – long postponed, long-delayed. Even as we can say they brought a lot of it upon themselves – to our collective detriment – I submit that the PNC administrations never were subjected to such deadening stress. Would they have had the brains, skills and support to deal with such sustained burdens? Perhaps the challenges would not have been posed in the first place.
The shame of shortcomings
Mind you, far be it from me to pardon or absolve the PPP governments for their stubbornness, soft touches for discrimination and corruption, along with routine incompetence.
It is a fact that corruption, cocaine trafficking and money-laundering have thrived under the PPP watch! (I suspect however that the drugs problem would challenge any regime!) I lay at this government’s feet the “softness” over crime-fighting for six years; the reluctance to engage perceived opponents who would love to contribute; the lack of will to frontally engage foreign assistance for crime-fighting in a more practical perspective and the failure to reform and improve our justice system. Just to mention a few of many failures. I will leave the lack of innovation to improve the quality of life and lower the cost of living for next time.
You know what? Balance the challenges, the good, against the bad, and in all open-minded fairness, without fear, favour or racist consideration, decide how you would assess this government – which evolved from the 1992 “victory”
Until
