In other circumstances, a simple parliamentary manoeuvre would have resolved the PPP’s problem. Inducements offered two members elected on the opposition tickets, and a majority would have been assured. Recall legislation approved during the last government now means that this option is ruled out.
Fidelity to the list is de rigueur. And as it happens, history has now handed to the PPP a wonderful opportunity to start ‘trusting’ habitual opponents and more recent adversaries. The alternative is the administrative equivalent of a paralytic stroke at the first motion of no-confidence that is sure to come. In again other circumstances, a coalition would have been the preferred modality of resolution. A puzzling sort of prescience on the part of the earlier Constitutional Reform group has combined with the party list system to deprive the PPP of this strategy.
Compromise and accommodation are now the only means that guarantee survival.
But this is not necessarily a bad thing for the country. In other words this could end up being the imposition of the obvious – a multi-party arrangement that brings psychological comfort, hope, and ethnic security, to the majority of Guyanese. This could mean the end or at least the muting of a certain type of racial narrative and the politics it impeded or imposed. This could mark the stamp of declining relevance on a type of anecdotal and mythified history that some politicians campaigned to have engraved in stone.
But what is of even greater importance to the PPP, is the fact that this could mean the chance to honour one of the dreams that Dr Jagan always wished to dream – that of a people united in solidarity against a common enemy, colonial exploitation, imperialist economics, poverty and under-development; whatever becomes the enemy of the historical moment.
The PNC and other members of APNU, as well as the AFC, are themselves living examples of that will to live and work together that is the cry of the times. The PNC will forever be remembered as the first of the major parties that had the courage to enunciate on a platform of national unity. It is telling that Brig Granger reiterates that the principle governing discussions and, we suppose future work with the PPP, is that which propels us to the goal of a truly Guyanese government and style of governance.
To my mind the AFC remains an unknown. Past pronouncements suggest that the party wishes to become the ‘floating vote’ in the House, saying ‘yeah’ to whichever wind blows in a direction it favours.
The problem here is that its intervention will remain restricted to a House that has authority and influence constitutionally circumscribed by the ample powers enjoyed by the presidency and cabinet. In Guyana meaningful change is only achievable when the actors have day-to-day administrative powers and when real influence, exceeding the lightning bolt of simple threats of no-confidence, is exerted over the presidency.
The obvious, therefore, when seriously considered and translated into reality, would consist of a cabinet composed of all of the participants in the post-election arrangement. Proportionately represented of course. And with certain controversial functions (perhaps finance and home affairs) managed by honest and competent technocrats. Past history has distinguished us a people sometimes seized by an ancestral fear or mistrust or some sort of complex that makes us miss the political chances of the moment. This is the hour when the diversity of our voters and variety of our choices must be represented in the governments we put in place.
Yours faithfully,
Abu Bakr
