Dear Editor,
AFC Chairman Khemraj Ramjattan’s warning of unrest should government proceed with plans to increase electricity tariffs in Linden (SN, June 22), has been exploited by PPP apologists to mean Mr Ramjattan has called for turmoil or disorder. Mr Ramjattan has merely surmised that the PPP may be hoping that the increased tariffs would lead to unrest and result in snap elections.
Apparently, while the aim of snap elections is to recapture parliamentary control from APNU and the AFC, the assumed strategy is to get unrest started in the APNU-friendly Linden community, allowing the PPP to then frame the unrest in the context of some sort of ethnic-based political battle, and persuade Indians to rally around the PPP in the event snap elections are called.
We don’t know if the source of Mr Ramjattan’s warning was from inside Freedom House, but it wouldn’t be the first time Mr Ramjattan alerted us to what may have been an ‘inside tip off.’
During this year’s Budget presentation, Stabroek News carried a news story on April 16, ‘Ramjattan warns of plans to buy MPs,‘ in which Mr Ramjattan warned at an AFC-sponsored symposium on the 2012 Budget at the Pegasus Hotel, that the PPP regime was planning to ‘buy’ support from opposition members to get its 2012 Budget passed without amendments.
“We also have to be on our toes because we know, and I want to make this quite clear, we know of a strategy whereby government is now trying to buy two or three parliamentarians on the opposition side to just cut that thing; let us fall sick on a very important day for voting.”
On April 18, SN carried another story, ‘APNU won’t support Budget in present form – Granger,‘ but then on April 19, SN reported a shocker, “Budget passage closer…after government/APNU deal – AFC cuts defeated.‘ That volte face was hard to explain.
Only after intense pressure from the private media (including SN’s scathing must-read editorial, ‘APNU’s deal with the government,‘ April 23)) and members of the public that the APNU/government deal was scuttled. Nevertheless, Mr Ramjattan may have been right on the money then, and he may be right on the money this time about a PPP plan to see if the increased tariffs in Linden could lead to protest and eventually snap elections.
Guyanese, therefore, need to recognize the AFC is not calling for unrest, but warning that any unrest could play right into the hands of the corrupt PPP and its government, which has not changed despite the changing of the guard.
Despite early misgivings, some of us hoped that President Donald Ramotar would engineer a change, but ever since he was sworn in, his government has engaged in political gamesmanship to give the appearance that it wants to govern but that the parliamentary opposition is stymieing its agenda for progress. Truth is, all the parliamentary opposition has been trying to do is restore some semblance of accountability, responsibility and transparency in a government that ran amok with public funds and resources for the last dozen years.
To my fellow Guyanese, today’s politics is not about the PPP versus the PNC/APNU or about Blacks versus Indians; it is about a conscious people versus corrupt politics and crooked politicians. Also on a peculiar level, it is about the PPP versus the AFC, for whereas the PPP once used the PNC as its whipping boy to stir up racial insecurity and fear as a factor to herd the PPP faithful into voting PPP, that dynamic has changed as the AFC has replaced the PNC as the real threat to the PPP’s support base.
That does not mean that racial insecurity is no longer the key to the PPP’s survival in office, for even though the PNC has lost racial relevance, the PPP can still try to advance the argument that the AFC cannot beat the PPP or PNC/APNU in any election but could only serve as a spoiler to undermine the PPP thus giving the keys of the government to the PNC/APNU.
But will the majority of the PPP support base buy that argument even as they recognize today’s PPP is not the same PPP of the Cheddi Jagan era, and many probably believe that former PPP stalwarts Mr Ramjattan and Mr Moses Nagamootoo (both now in the AFC) actually represent the difference between what should be in the PPP and what is in the PPP?
Not even the PPP knows the answer here, but it knows it is in trouble with its support base because of the AFC, and also because the parliamentary opposition is determined to uncover the mountain of atrocities of its government’s dealings over the last dozen years.
The PPP may then be going for broke in its bid to regain absolute control of Parliament, hence the delay tactics that include running to the courts while alternating between accusing the parliamentary opposition of attempting to sabotage its agenda for progress and development, and expressing a willingness to engage in tripartite talks.
In the end, regaining parliamentary control via snap elections may be what it is all about, and the recent commissioning of the water cannon and the cancellation of vacation days for senior cops may very well further signs of this eventuality.
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
