Dear Editor,
I don’t trust them, I don’t like them and I couldn’t care less about them, but you must give credit where and when credit’s due. The PNC has taken some very bold steps that I never dreamed they were capable of taking after 28 years of totalitarianism and destruction.
This is a still a fundamentally flawed party with significant problems of internal democracy, but it is opening itself to democracy in a remarkable way while the PPP is marching towards full-blown autocracy. While the PNC is announcing plans to have an open primary, President Jagdeo is warning of the dangers of secret balloting, one of the cornerstones of democracy.
This is a striking manifestation of how political organizations evolve or are forced to evolve.
During the 28 years of PNC despotism, the PNC and PPP were organized similarly. Both of these organizations were run by powerful central figures in Burnham and the Jagans, who made all the critical decisions of the party. The rest were largely yes-men who bowed in deference to these individuals. Democracy was a joke.
When the PPP came to power in 1992, it simply continued its democratic centralism vaudeville show and soon became an elected dictatorship, while the PNC took its political show to comical levels with all kinds of outlandish power struggles providing slapstick relief for the public. Then came 2010 and the PNC got an epiphany and decided to give internal democracy a chance for its presidential candidate race, and managed to distance itself from its ugly cousin in the PPP, which is still fighting for the old-school Stalinist show of hands style of voting.
It took the PNC some 46 years to realize the authoritarianism of old is dead science. The PPP is in denial or incapable of changing.
The PNC is still politically abject and remains a threat to itself and is always capable of derailing itself given the fiasco that passed for the last leadership election. But regardless of these endemic problems, one must commend the PNC for using the most open process ever used to elect a presidential candidate by any major political party in Guyana. Shenanigans may still appear during this process and rigged elections are a distinct possibility but at least the PNC tried it at a time the PPP is seeking to venture into absolutism in its process. I would be terribly ashamed to be a PPP supporter in the day and age when the PNC has become the frontrunner of democracy on as critical an issue as selection of a party’s presidential candidate. Time is such a beautiful thing.
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell
