Dear Editor,
Of late, PPP and PNC contenders for the presidency have dominated the news, but until and unless I see the backs of President Bharrat Jagdeo and PNC Leader, Mr Robert Corbin, as they exit the door of politics into retirement where recently approved generous retirement packages await both, I won’t place any bets yet.
This is supposed to be an election year, and the year is very, very young, yet pregnant with rumblings about presidential candidates and traditionally disturbing election-related shenanigans.
My New Year’s wish for Guyana, therefore, is that, God and government willing, just over three-quarter of a million Guyanese at home will wake up on election day with one president and go back to bed with a different one; a better one.
President Bharrat Jagdeo, who declared he is not seeking a third term, must be replaced and not even be allowed to ‘pull a Putin’ or any kind of political puppet master. Not that replacing the PPP should be treated as a fait accompli or done deal, because no matter what major negatives are known of the Caribbean’s most heavy-handed government, the ruling party continues to enjoy the die-hard support of thousands.
Still, many who once supported the supposedly populist PPP and even its political grandstanding and showboating President have since distanced themselves from both the party and the President for moving the party away from the original vision and mission of the late Dr Cheddi Jagan for a lean, clean government of the economically downtrodden. They have essentially accused this government of turning the single most important democratic gain of the party and nation in 1992 into the personal gains of a chosen few over the last dozen years. As a result, they see this year’s election as something of a make or break to return the PPP to its original calling.
These former PPP supporters, among them workers in the sugar belt, now also share a common vision with many others who never supported the PPP or its President in wanting to protect Guyana from experiencing any further erosion of constitutional order and the rule of law under an out of control president. However, that’s where their commonality ends, because they do not share any history of working or friendly relations pursuing the same goal.
The goal of whoever is seeking to play the lead role in wresting power from the PPP, therefore, is to try and get former PPP supporters and longstanding non-PPP folks onto the same page so they can work from the same script to achieve the same result: regime change in 2011.
If this uniting aspect cannot be accomplished, then it won’t be easy wresting power from the PPP. So the PNC and AFC, the two other parliamentary parties with any type of voter appeal, have their work cut out.
Meanwhile, one school of political logic says that since no individual opposition party can unseat the PPP, then there must be a grand coalition or partnership and a consensus presidential candidate going forward. Otherwise, if the PPP does not pull enough votes to form a government, and the collective opposition does, then it can form a coalition government. Whether it will include the PPP in some sort of shared governance is to be seen.
Ironically, there are actually persons in the PPP, the PNC, the WPA, the AFC and even civil society, who firmly believe shared governance, featuring parliamentary parties and civil society groups, is the only solution to Guyana’s dilemma. Nevertheless, what is exasperating is that while shared governance advocates see this route as the beacon for Guyana’s future, not one of these advocates has so far delivered up for scrutiny a pragmatic concept of how the mechanics of such a system of governance will work.
So, pardon me for saying that interesting times are ahead for political parties and politicians in the run-up to the 2011 elections… if they are held, but two quick but timely observations are worth mentioning before I close.
First, if elections are held, this year’s will not be about the bogeyman PNC as the enemy of the PPP. This title has fallen to the President whose leadership style has estranged many PPP supporters. Second, this is the first time in Guyana’s politics we are starting an election year with no clear-cut winner being projected.
While there are many hypothetical partnership scenarios and debates rage about who would make a better president, this apparent open season for rampant speculation could well come down to partnerships and coalitions as a means to unseat the PPP. But apart from possible coalitions or partnerships between and among parties and groups, is it possible that the elections can also come down to a two-man partnership featuring President Bharrat Jagdeo and PNC Leader Robert Corbin? I am talking here about either a President Jagdeo and Prime Minister Corbin (since Corbin is against a Jagdeo third term but amenable to shared governance), or a PPP Leader Jagdeo and PNC Leader Corbin vicariously running the next government through their preferred presidential candidates, with the presidency going to the PPP and the prime ministership going to the PNC.
And that is providing the President doesn’t have to deal with orchestrated chaotic events that warrant his postponement of elections and indefinite stay in office.
In Guyana politics, I have learned you never rule anything in or out.
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
New York
