Dear Editor,
It’s been like donkey years since the Freedom House heavyweights told us the PPP would announce its presidential candidate for the next general elections. Nothing. The silence is a problem. Not for me. For the PPP. You see the PPP is in a royal mess. They have a headache on their hands the size of Essequibo. They can’t find a leader. Not that the PPP is alone in its problems. The PNC just called the hearse following its funeral. The only thing the PNC needs more than a burial is someone to dig the grave. The AFC has its legal egos staring intently at each other’s throats. Not that I expected differently with one coming from the PNC and the other from the PPP and both having a history of making power plays while in those respective parties. But the PPP is still the bigger problem since it is the party capable of getting the most votes in the next election. The PPP’s selection of a leader was usually a swift, painless process when the Jagans did the picking, and the others simply nodded in approval. Now that the legendary Jagans are no longer around the power thirstiness of the men near the wheel boil to the top. Swords are drawn and the glint is in the eyes of combatants. Everybody wants their cup to overflow. Old, young, washed up and less washed up want this 83,000 square miles badly.
Never since Forbes Burnham aka the Kabaka tried to con his way to power in the early PPP and Balram Singh Rai claimed he was conned from power by the Jagans in the slightly less early PPP have we had such action. It’s old versus young. Government versus party. Stalwarts versus newbies. Ideologues versus pragmatists. A lot of hectic action but no leaders. None of the names mentioned from Ralph Ramkarran to Moses Nagamootoo to Donald Ramotar to Robert Persaud inspire anything but a big loud ‘steewps.’ But this is what you get when you practise a bizarre something called democratic centralism where a bunch of thirty-five mostly archaic guys selected from slightly more than a thousand handpicked guys sit on a panel year after year making decisions for 750,000 people at large and over 300,000 at heart in the party. Where young brilliant men and women with leadership potential are not pulled to the forefront but have to serve in the trenches for donkey years before they can ascend to the chamber of consequences. The young must then toe the line, can’t challenge the status quo and must sing ‘Cumbaya’ to the party dogma. By that time, the vibrant young men of potential are washed and converted into good ole party boys and here we are.
So the PPP is in its leadership wilderness trying desperately to find something from its field of nothing. For what it has sowed it is now reaping. It sowed blind obeisance to the handpicking skills of two people from 1950 to 2009 and nothing more. Now its fields lie fallow. It sowed unyielding commitment to taking those from within after long years of service without looking for even a few good men from without. Press secretaries don’t automatically become good agricultural managers. Finance ministers can’t acquire charisma if they were never born with it. There are accomplished financial managers with charisma available if you care to look outside the darkroom. The AFC will head down that road with its similarly constituted constitution and Executive Committee. I hope someone fresh comes in and challenges the former PPP and PNC altar boys in Trotman and Ramjattan for real change. These guys talk a good game and maybe could deliver somewhat better than the last two shows running Guyana, but they come from the same tree that has run this nation amok since 1950. So I am waiting on the PPP to unveil its Wizard of Oz. If the bickering for power continues is it possible that the current Wizard will step aside to allow one of his followers to ascend to the throne and then assume a position of prominence such as prime minister or finance minister with fingers still on the strings? Hmmm… food for thought. Forbes Burnham would have been pleased. If Balram Singh Rai is to be believed, Cheddi Jagan too.
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell
