Dear Editor,
Ganesh Singh says PPP supporters must vote out the PPP for one term to generate the badly need internal change the PPP needs in order to be reformed and reborn and to allow new leadership to rise within the party. His letter titled ‘Neither the PNC nor the PPP has a transported title for Guyana‘ (SN, November 4) is a brilliant one with a potent idea for several reasons. Firstly, it is a given that the PPP needs to be radically reformed. Those who hijacked the party and subverted any chance of a democratic future within it have to be removed. Secondly, the idea of a temporary timeout for the PPP as opposed to a complete banishment of the party is palatable to many PPP supporters. Therefore, they will support a one-term trial proposal.
Thirdly, PPP supporters voting the PPP out of power for a term to achieve the transformation their party desperately needs puts power back in the hands of PPP members and supporters. That is a desperately needed change in the PPP.
Fourthly, PPP supporters have a viable party to park their votes in the AFC, which has a former PPP-ite in Khemraj Ramjattan as its presidential candidate and has a PPP legend in Moses Nagamootoo at its forefront. Further, former PPP-ites who hold powerful positions within the AFC have a track record of fighting the same corruption and wrongdoing that consumes the current PPP. Realistically, PPP supporters looking to teach the power-drunk ‘cussbird‘ and his comrades a lesson for one term can park their votes with the AFC and then return to the PPP in 2016. That is the beauty of teaching this current PPP leadership cabal a good lesson. PPP voters have an alternative they can use even temporarily. Fifthly, the one-term slapping PPP supporters can put on this group of PPP incompetents who have destroyed the party provides an opportunity for an interim party like the AFC to prove itself. PPP supporters can get two birds with one stone as its punishment of the current PPP leadership, for one term would provide PPP supporters an opportunity to see if the AFC can deliver. If they can’t they get kicked out in 2016, plain and simple.
Sixthly, the incredible majesty of a one-term power withholding strategy is that PPP supporters can now get two parties in the PPP and the AFC where it parked its votes working overtime to win its support. Once PPP supporters have kicked the PPP out of power for one term, the PPP will likely undergo massive change to try to win its supporters back in 2016. Seventh, voting for another party for one term in order to achieve dramatic change in your own party is not splitting the vote. It is a brilliant move.
I’ve maintained that the PNC cannot ever return to power in Guyana because the demographics and numbers don’t support it. Further, the AFC has stated that it will not form any kind of alliance with APNU/PNC. The PPP and the PNC have not ruled out an alliance. If the majority of PPP supporters migrate to the AFC for one term to teach the current PPP leadership a lesson and to fix their party, the AFC will become like the PPP, only more multiracial, even if only for one term. This means PPP supporters get a younger, cleaner, more competent and more idea-driven version of their own party with the AFC. The incredible appeal of the one-term solution for PPP supporters is evident. More critically, it is extremely workable in the sense that PPP supporters will get power and will get their party reformed, a classic win-win situation. In fact, PPP supporters can gain significantly more from pursuing the one term probation strategy than from voting for this current dictatorship that dominates the PPP and excludes its working class supporters and members. The one term solution is arguably the best proposal in this current election for disgusted PPP supporters desperately demanding better.
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell
