Given the present political gridlock, the prospect of a consensus presidential candidate for the opposition is seen as having more resonance now, according to columnist Ralph Ramkarran.
In the last Sunday Stabroek, he said the present political stalemate has led to “well-meaning persons” raising the issue once again of a consensus presidential candidate for the Opposition. He said that while this matter is always below the surface it has more resonance now given the 2011 election results.
“Now that the Opposition together have a majority, many feel that a consensus presidential candidate can now bring victory to the Opposition”, Ramkarran wrote while also arguing that ultimately the only way forward for the country was governance that involved both of the major political parties exercising some form of executive authority.
The simple solution for a consensus candidate would be for one of its leaders, most likely Opposition Leader David Granger to take up the mantle. However Ramkarran argued that his candidature would be a non-starter. “For a reason that is well known but need not detain us, the proponents of the consensus presidential candidate idea do not see Mr. Granger as attracting enough PPP supporters to lead to an Opposition majority. They also argue that the AFC will be crushed if it aligns with the APNU. Hence the search for a suitable candidate from outside the ranks of the Opposition who has broad, across the board appeal”, Ramkarran stated.
He said it was probably unlikely that APNU and the AFC can find a suitable consensus presidential candidate upon whom they can both agree.
Ramkarran said it also has to be remembered that both leaders will have to relinquish their own positions and “convince their supporters to support someone who most likely has not been an open supporter of either Party or may not even have been a politician and therefore did not pay any dues. Agreeing to a consensus presidential candidate is possible but not easy to accomplish.”
Noting the stubborn domination of the two major parties with entrenched ethnic support, Ramkarran said for a consensus candidate to materialize the Opposition parties would have to have a high degree of certainty that it will bring victory. He noted that there is no poll or study to suggest this.
The last major effort at a consensus candidate came prior to the 1992 general elections when a painstaking attempt by the PPP, the Working People’s Alliance, the Democratic Labour Movement and a host of parties under the then opposition grouping, the Patriotic Coalition for Democracy, failed.
Much more than a consensus presidential candidate though, Ramkarran said it is believed that the electorate would welcome the historical promise of national unity made by the founders of the nation, the General Council of the original PPP before the PNC broke away.
Ramkarran, who left the PPP last year after nearly 50 years of membership, said it is no longer feasible for these two parts returning to the days of 1950, but it is possible for a coalition Government to be agreed upon to move the country forward.
He pointed out that the PPP has supported shared governance in the past and ‘winner does not take all’ politics and the late PNC President Desmond Hoyte announced support for such a position in 2002.
Ramkarran said that the persons who are pressing for a consensus candidate ought not to succumb to the frustrations of the present political stalemate.
“Countries like Guyana with a society divided in two major ethnic groups which generally rely on the two major political parties to represent their interests and who have had a history of inter ethnic violence and upheavals will never find it easy to arrive at a political accommodation. All must therefore continue to patiently advocate the only rational way forward for Guyana. That is a system of governance which involves both major political parties exercising executive authority in one form or another. There are or can be many different equations”, he stated.
He pointed to a PPP proposal by the late President Cheddi Jagan in the 1970s as the kind of statesmanship that was needed at this time.
“Guyana should never forget what Cheddi Jagan was prepared to do and how far he was prepared to go to end the political deadlock in the 1970s, to head off potential violence and to create a stable political system. While this is not being suggested now, the example is worth recalling.
“In the PPP’s National Patriotic Front proposals of 1977 it was agreed by the PPP, and formally proposed, that the political party which won the largest number of votes would hold the post of prime minister and would decline to contest the post of executive president under new constitutional arrangements. In the situation that was anticipated to emerge, and did emerge in 1992 in free and fair elections, the PPP would have won the largest amount of votes and Cheddi Jagan would have served as prime minister under executive president Forbes Burnham whose party would have won fewer votes than the PPP. In other words Cheddi Jagan was prepared to concede to Forbes Burnham the post of head of government to which he would have been entitled and to serve under Burnham in the interest (of) peace, harmony and development. We need to continue the effort to return our country to statesmanship of that quality”, Ramkarran added.