Dear Editor,
It is too early to tell if SN’s Sunday (January 11) article, `Prospects good for APNU/AFC alliance negotiations – Granger’, is really a feel-good news story to raise the hopes of readers about a better alternative to the sad story being written by the corrupt PPP regime or a news story about the AFC and APNU wanting to feel good about their own hopes. But the burning question is whether these two parties can really get along under the same political umbrella while retaining their unique identities going forward into pending elections. To answer that question, I have to revert to the cautionary December 8, 2014 letter by Mr. Carl B. Greenidge in Stabroek News, `AFC proposal to lead a pro-democracy alliance will test the negotiating skills of the Opposition leadership.’ “The practice in negotiations,” Mr. Greenidge wrote, “is for the first offer to reflect a maximum position, the best possible outcome for the proposer. Other leaders, while not ignoring the positions, should give thought to their own positions and try to identify what can be common ground in the proposals. The skills required of such an exercise should not however be under-estimated. The Opposition leadership will be put to the test to demonstrate that they have the very negotiating skills which the PPP demonstrably lacks.” Admittedly, when I read Mr. Greenidge’s letter, it appeared as the first sign that APNU may be amenable to the AFC’s stunning volte face proposal, via Chairman Khemraj Ramjattan at the AFCs December 2014 Congress, that the AFC was ready to engage APNU, because there was need for a united patriotic cooperation among all Guyanese in undertaking the “herculean task” of voting out the PPP and electing a true government of national unity, “one in which the politics of inclusion reigns over the politics of fear and division.” Whether the AFC’s arrival at this juncture of engaging APNU means it has matured politically or it has morphed pointlessly will be determined over time, but I have no illusions about the AFC’s description of the PPP’s type of politics that require urgent remedial actions at the ballot box. However, given the myriad definitions and explanations about politics – it is a war of opinions; a platform to personal advancement; a high stakes game of lies and deception; it is a dirty and deadly game or, according to Winston Churchill, it is not a game, but an earnest business – I want to start by asking serious questions about a potential alliance to replace the PPP. Editor, I was among the hundreds of thousands of Guyanese, at home and abroad, who wanted to see political change take place in Guyana after years of the PNC ruling the roost.
After the PPP replaced the PNC in 1992, according to Guyana’s indefatigable columnist, Mr. Freddie Kissoon, Guyana did not experience a genuine change, but an exchange for the worse. And since change, despite the best of efforts to avoid it, remains the only constant, even in politics, what sort of change exactly can Guyanese expect from a pro-democracy movement that includes the AFC and APNU, primarily, and others from civil society and those disaffected, decent PPPites? I know the PNC has been calling for, even protesting in the 1990s, for a form of unity government. This call continued with the birth of APNU. The concept has been bandied about so often by so many that it began to emerge as some sort of panacea for what ails our political culture and national life. Some, curious about its operations or skeptical about its viability, have questioned whether it really is a Band-Aid solution to a deep-rooted, festering problem that requires surgical incisions, strong doses of political medication and constant follow-up attention to provide healing and closure so the nation is ready for genuine unity and development. The Alliance For Change, on the other hand, was born in October 2005 during a wave of third party movements sweeping Guyana in preparation for the 2006 elections. Over the last nine years, its primary mission was to end ethnic voting, as practised by the PPP and PNC, while insisting on maintaining its unique identity by adamantly refusing to coalesce with APNU lest it be subsumed and obliterated, like the TUF in 1968 or the Civic after Cheddi Jagan died. But as the PPP waxed worse under Jagdeo and Ramotar, losing voter support steadily from 2001 to 2006 to 2011, it was the PPPs loss of its parliamentary majority that removed its invincibility and made many observers up the tempo for an AFC-APNU coalition. So, while it seems to me that the current move towards a form of coalition is all about timing, the hurdles still to clear include coalition formation and a strategy to produce the desired results. Right now, the players are off to a seemingly rocky start, testimony to Mr. Greenidge’s prophecy that any coalition will test the negotiating skills of the opposition leadership. The AFC is saying it believes it has the capacity to lead the pro-democracy movement to capture government. APNU is saying it has a bigger constituency than the AFC, so it should lead. AFC says it wants a confidentiality agreement before going forward. APNU says it needs to see what is in the AFCs proposals before publicly responding. Let me conclude by saying that while the upcoming elections may be a numbers game that requires strategic thinking to beat the PPP, the end game plan must convince Guyanese that the new age coalition politics is about Guyanese and not about any politician or political party. Sadly, the politics of the new millennium, so far, has been one of intrigue and individualism. Some politicians seem to quietly ask, “what can I get out of it?’ as opposed to, “what can I put into it?” And it is because of this self-serving nature of politics that many average Joes and Janes stay away from it, opting reluctantly to exercise their franchise at the ballot box rather than get involved directly in the day-to-day activities that shape communal and national life. Hopefully, better thinking will prevail in this emerging pro-democracy undertaking by putting the people first, with a people-based constitution.
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
