Dear Editor,
I thank Dr Joey Jagan for indulging me with his response, ‘Shared governance will surely solve a lot of our problems,’ (SN, February 10), as if shared governance is a stand alone panacea. In his opening line, he said that his position on the failings of the PPP government still stands, and that I am ignorant of political matters in Guyana. I agree with him on the first point and disagree with him on the second.
The truth is, Dr Joey is not the only Guyanese who recognizes that the PPP government has failed; so have multiple thousands of Guyanese at home and abroad, and so when he wrote, “…those like Mervin always attack the PPP by attacking Jagan who is not, in any way, a part of the cabal, which leads the PPP,” he seemed unable to differentiate between a personal attack and a political criticism and was unwilling to see the nexus between the cabal running the government and his father’s failure to have a coherent succession plan at the time of his death.
I strongly believe in separating the personal from the political in the letter columns, and so my criticism of Dr Jagan was politically centred on the obvious lack of a coherent succession plan, which gave rise to the cabal now responsible for those government failings Dr Joey and so many of us now recognize. So there is no way I will let Dr Joey get away with his attempt to exculpate his father from what he called the cabal responsible for the failings of this government, because the same cabal running the government was right there as political underlings of Dr Jagan up to the time he died. How can Dr Jagan escape blame for what is playing out? He handed over the running of the country/government, not a family business, to his wife and she was not even a government official.
Going back to 1997, many of us openly questioned the authenticity of the note allegedly scribbled by Dr Jagan on his death bed and we scratched our heads at the convoluted musical chairs arrangement featuring the so-called ‘A-Team’ comprised of Mrs Janet Jagan and Messrs Sam Hinds and Bharrat Jagdeo.
But it was only after Dr Joey began writing angry letters to the press about a so-called ‘Gang of Eight’ that ‘hijacked’ his father’s party and was taking it along a different route than his father intended that the gravity of Dr Jagan’s failure at succession planning started sinking in faster and deeper.
We still don’t know who the eight people were, and in what direction his father’s party wanted to take the party, but if Dr Joey’s passionate support for shared governance was what his father wanted just before he died, then he should come out and say so. He should also say if his mother changed his father’s plans, because this screwing up in the government today didn’t just evolve on its own after Dr Jagan died in 1997; it had to exist in the PPP for some time prior, and while I did not mention any other area of Dr Jagan’s political life that could undermine his legacy, I will say now that if the failings of this government have not already undermined his legacy, then I don’t know what else will.
Before going on, let me quickly say while there are some Guyanese who look up to or revere the late Dr Jagan, I don’t. And it has everything to do with his totally irrelevant ideology and nothing to do with race. Still, this does not mean I will ever set out to “denigrate that great man,” as Dr Joey accused me of doing. But since greatness is earned and not given, I will leave it to others better than me to judge whether Dr Jagan’s political contributions to Guyana earned him the right to be called ‘great.’ No debate from me at this juncture.
On his point about the AFC, he is right that I am an AFC supporter, but he is wrong to believe that because the PPP and PNC pulled down a combined 88% of the votes in 2006, that this huge figure automatically makes them eligible candidates for the shared governance concept. His level of political naiveté here makes me wonder if he is the one ignorant of political matters in Guyana, because the real reason for any shared governance in Guyana should be intractable problems between or among the people. In Guyana, the problem is not among the people per se, but between the PPP and PNC, and since Dr Joey himself said the PPP government has failed, why should the failed PPP and the failed PNC, which always put their partisan interests above and ahead those of the people, ever be allowed to share power? Maybe if the PPP made a positive difference in the last 17 years we wouldn’t even be engaging in this conversation.
And it was because of their failure in government for a combined 45 years and a failure over time to undergo genuine party reforms that helped to launch the AFC, which scored five parliamentary seats (a sixth is at the centre of a court controversy) one year after launching. But while the AFC may have pulled support mainly from the PNC base, it was instructive to also learn that a significant portion of the PPP voter base stayed home. It may have been voter apathy, but it was a definite ripple of a sea change that may be reflective of waves to come in a big game-changer. In other words, even though the PPP and PNC got the bulk of the votes in 2006, the AFC may well be the small key that unlocks the big door to the future Guyanese have been dreaming of after enduring the nightmarish rule of the PPP and PNC.
Meanwhile, I really don’t understand why, after the failings of the PPP and PNC, some people supposedly interested in change would get all hot under the collar and even nasty when others talk positively about the AFC or any other party or movement to topple the PPP and PNC. It seems as though these people either quietly support the status quo while mouthing the need for change, or they want change to happen but only on their terms. The PNC had 28 years to deliver the goods, and it didn’t. The PPP had 17 years to prove it was different from or better than the PNC and deliver the goods, and it wasn’t and it didn’t. So, how can two failures come together and produce success in the form of shared governance? Two zeroes used in any of the four basic maths formulas (adding, subtracting, dividing or multiplying) will still give you a zero.
I am going to say it, hopefully, for the last time: shared coalition governance, even based on Dr Joey’s formula – one where , not only is there PPP/PNC involvement, but other parties like the AFC and a broad civil society involvement where parameters of agreed economic policy (the private sector as the real engine of growth), political policy (full democracy with the state intervention policies of the past being greatly reduced) and a new approach to cultural, religious and civic dispensations – cannot work with the present players on either the PPP or PNC team. It also cannot work with the present modus operandi of either major party. In fact, if Dr Joey really believes the ‘cabal’ responsible for the PPP government’s failings today is capable of handling shared governance, he needs a crash course in Guyana Politics 101.
If Dr Joey strongly believes in shared governance between the PPP and PNC, then he should at least use his name recognition to help make a difference by publicly demanding both parties undergo at least some basic reforms in order to respons-ibly handle shared governance. Pulling down most votes aside, as long as there is no reform leading to greater transparency and accountability in either party in the eyes of a detached public, then neither party will be transparent and accountable even if they form the government.
And both Messrs Raphael Trotman and Khemraj Ramjattan, formerly of the PNC and PPP respectively, were advocates of reforms in their previous parties. Dr Joey was extremely disingenuous when he assertively opined: “…the AFC has failed to break into PPP support because Ramjattan, who they put as point man to breach the PPP vote has proven to be impotent and can deliver nothing much to broaden AFC support.” I don’t know what his beef with Mr Ramjattan or the AFC is, but I know that Dr Joey was once part of another party/movement that called for a big tent coalition in 2006, and after the election the AFC entered Parliament, but Dr Joey’s big tent coalition concept crashed and burned. Can Dr Joey still afford to be dismissive of the potency of the AFC and the hope it represents for disillusioned Guyanese, including PPP and PNC supporters?
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
