It is sometimes difficult to know whether the government is in a state of denial, or whether it is aware that it is playing a much weaker hand than the one Mr Jagdeo held, and is cynically trying to reverse history. Most likely it is a bit of both. One thing more recent statements from government spokespersons has revealed is that governing per se is not something which exercises their minds at the present time; after nearly a year in office it is still all about the acquisition and maintenance of power.
Leaving aside Dr Luncheon, who seems to have deluded himself into believing that the functions of a Head of the Presidential Secretariat equate to those of Don King, we had the Prime Minister last week – always an earnest gentleman not given to tergiversation – telling the National Assembly that the opposition was destabilising the country as a method of getting into power.
Never mind that after APNU and the government agreed on an electricity increase for Linden, the former was forced to back down by Lindeners themselves, and that the entire Linden protest was largely locally generated.
How come, one wonders, that the Prime Minister of all people, who should know Linden better than other members of the Cabinet, had not noticed that the political purchase of the Georgetown-based parties was limited during the crisis in the bauxite town three months ago? The answer would seem to be that the PPP/C is working with a template which dates back many decades and supplies it with an automatic explanation for the relationship between itself and the old PNC. No thinking needs to be done; there is no effort at an assessment of the changes which time has wrought – even in the two old warhorse parties – and which might require an amendment to the received wisdom. The framework for rationalization is all about the struggle for power between two old antagonists; while governing, which is the primary purpose for political parties normally seeking power, becomes very much a secondary concern.
President Donald Ramotar himself had recourse to the template after the events in Agricola, although neither he, nor any member of the PPP has adduced evidence to date to support allegations that the disturbances there were orchestrated by specific members of the opposition whose names were later cited, or even the opposition in general. But it was Ms Gail Teixeira who delivered herself of the week’s most ironic statement. With reference to the attempt to prevent Home Affairs Minister Rohee from being heard in the House, Ms Teixeira said: “This is unacceptable, that this House, by undemocratic majority rule, is not allowing the member to read the Bill…” Undemocratic majority rule? Hasn’t the bedrock of the PPP’s position over the decades always been that majority rule is democracy, and that what sets the ruling party apart from the PNC is the fact that the latter resorted to minority rule? Unwittingly, therefore, she opened herself to the observation – the context notwithstanding – that she has made public her party’s underlying assumption that democracy means the PPP being in power (and not just office), whether as a majority government or a minority one. Whatever political term one attaches to this notion, it cannot be ‘democracy.’
The problem in the current situation is that governing in the true sense of that concept will require some level of co-operation with the opposition. None of our politicians is very experienced at this or very predisposed to it, and the process will inevitably be slow. In addition, there are no clear mechanisms for proceeding in this mode except in the form of the Select Committees in Parliament which for the most part are limited in their scope to Bills referred to them by the National Assembly. (Nevertheless, a lot of rational work could potentially be done there.) Add to this the PPP/C’s constricted mindset and the apparent lack of co-ordination and organization of the opposition referred to in Monday’s editorial, and the prognostications for progress are not good.
The private sector has deplored the “dog-fighting” in Parliament, but this is probably unavoidable. What is far more dangerous is the ‘dog-fighting’ outside the context of Parliament, where accusations are made against individuals, and intransigent positions are adopted which would make negotiations even on unrelated matters, problematic, because of the hostile atmosphere they create. The President has not been helpful either, with his blanket comments on opposition Bills.
The private sector has been concerned about the lack of talks between the parliamentary parties on the Budget, while APNU Leader David Granger has proposed to the President the resuscitation of a tri-partite committee to discuss budgetary issues. Their concerns are amply justified if an impasse is to be avoided. However, the whole issue goes to the heart of government priorities, which, as said above, relate to a return to the status quo ante in power terms. They are showing no interest in governing, merely in power, and everything appears to hang on how soon they feel they can return to the electorate to secure the overall majority which they crave. As such, therefore, an impasse with the opposition may not be the abomination in their eyes that it is to everyone else in this country, and they will simply blame it on the other parties in the expectation that their constituency will then accept that an opposition legislative majority makes government impossible.
The problem with these kinds of negotiating situations is always that even if the government had more interest in governing than they appear to do, since they are the ones in office, they are the ones who will have to make the concessions; the opposition has nothing to offer in return except passage in the National Assembly. In the first place, in the government‘s eyes, giving way in negotiations is not a matter of making compromises; it is a question of losing face, and the opposition should be sensitive to this in terms of how issues are approached. In the second, and far more important, there is the outmoded ruling party template which comes into play whenever there are talks involving the old PNC and the PPP at some level. (The fact that there are now non-PNC elements in Parliament makes no difference to the PPP template; they simply brand them as PNC.) Making concessions, therefore, is in their perception giving the old adversary a step in the door to achieving power, and whenever circumstances force them to give way, they go into dilatory mode in the implementation of agreements, as is being alleged in the case of the Linden committees.
What the government does now in terms of Budget preparation will reveal whether they have any interest at all in governing this country during the life of the current Parliament. Of course, a Budget is a government responsibility, but there is no reason why the opposition parties cannot hold discussions with the Minister of Finance and his Budget team on the concerns of their constituencies, and strike agreements – which together with discussions would be suitably minuted – about discrete budgetary areas. The onus would still be on the government, not the government and opposition, to draw up the Budget, which would nevertheless reflect whatever had been agreed at an earlier stage.
The PPP cannot continue indefinitely trying to cram the facts into a template which no longer explains the political realities; time, at least, is against them. No one knows yet exactly what the results of the current census will be, but it would be surprising if it did not reflect the general trends indicated in past censuses, more particularly the last one, which show a decline in the share of the electorate held by both Africans and Indians. Neither group (particularly the former) will be able to form a government on the basis of ethnicity alone any time soon, and the PPP, at least, has recognised this for a while, which is why it has been courting the Amerindian constituency with such assiduity.
But given the centrifugal tendencies already evident in this society, even if in the next election the party in office manages to secure an overall majority, that is not a long-lasting prospect for the future for a variety of reasons. Apart from various other scenarios, there is always the possibility that somewhere down the line the Amerindians will find a leader like Stephen Campbell, and begin to exercise some independence of group action. If so, they will hold the balance of power. In other words, while this will probably not happen in the short term, demographic trends seem to be pointing in the direction of coalition-style governments some way down the line in the future. What the PPP/C is experiencing now is a foretaste of this, and it will be doing itself a service in terms of its long-term survival if it dumps the template now.