It appears to me that the political parties that were involved in the APNU/AFC coalition formation proceeded as if the PPP is so broken and discarded that its responses would not matter or would be worth very little. In a sense they are right: our political battles are usually ethnic struggles and more than is usual in normal political situations, most people have already made up their minds for which party they will cast their ballots.
Nonetheless, like most commentators, I believe that the coming attempt to remove the PPP/C will be closely fought and as such, small margins matter. In the propaganda battle, every step in the process of building and presenting the coalition should therefore be proceeded with only after properly assessing the possible responses of the PPP.
Previously in this column, I suggested that in Guyana political coalitions are not good in themselves: they must help to garner enough votes to take power, and for them to do so they must contain concrete policy proposals targeting specific groups and be properly contextualised.
I take the point made by Mr. Nowrang Persaud (“Timeline for Jeffrey’s 20 items too short” SN: 27/02/2015) that the timelines that were suggested may well be too short, and a further comment that too short time-lines may be as bad as none.
Yet I believe that specifics are important if politicians are to be held accountable. But more importantly, in the electoral process itself they are vital if one is to catch the imagination of some members of social groups, such as the aged, who are collectively suffering but for ethnic and other reasons may not easily be persuaded to give their support. That said, I am certain that it is not beyond us to find a workable compromise.
In relation to the APNU/AFC coalition, I said that there were four possible outcomes from the negotiations and that the third in terms of desirability is what we now have: a coalition led by an African, and I promised to explain this position today. The fourth and least desirable outcome was to have no coalition at all, and I discussed this last week.
One of the most obvious concerns is that many of the Indians who, disillusioned by the PPP in 2011 and perhaps not expecting them to lose even if they did not vote for it, would now vote for the PPP, or at best from the opposition standpoint, abstain from voting if the AFC and APNU were to form a coalition.
I believe that this is true, but since I also hold that the alliance was a necessary condition if the PPP is to be defeated, to mitigate the negative consequences I believe that significant compensation should have been made on the other side of the equation.
I do not believe that the choice of Brigadier David Granger as the presidential candidate makes that compensation. Indeed, in my view, choosing an African/former PNC/former army individual exacerbated the situation. We like to accuse the PPP of burying their heads in the sand, but quite apart from Mr. Granger being an African, his former roles allow the PPP to develop and sell a forceful propaganda narrative to the two most strategic racial groups: the Indians and Amerindians.
The parties to the alliance were aware of some of these difficulties, but lo and behold, in dealing with them they unnecessarily opened even more doors for the PPP propagandists.
For example, the very people who have perennially pilloried the PPP/C for making an amoral constitutional arrangement that the presidency will always go to the PPP are now proposing unconstitutional – and in my view useless – approaches to assuage ethnic concerns.
Over the years they have been banging into our heads that all the political/managerial power in Guyana rests in the presidency and that the position of prime minister is a joke. Now, in an effort to placate Indian ethnic concerns that will likely arise because of their own permutations, they seek to make that position important by telling us, inter alia, that the PM will chair the cabinet.
Mr. Moses Nagamootoo knows that constitutional responsibility for chairing the cabinet rests with the president but that under Cheddi Jagan cabinet was actually chaired by ministers. There is no political value to it. In the early days, Jagan even adopted the radical principle of cabinet voting rather than working by consensus. I will not dwell upon the many political/administrative difficulties inherent in this proposal.
Furthermore, Jagan moved everyone to the rank of minister and paid them as senior ministers with the political cry both before and after he came to office that these offices encouraged too much self-importance and pomp. The coalition returned to them merely to give status and encourage pomp. I hope that the benchmark that the alliance has adopted is not the present PPP but that of Cheddi Jagan.
I wrote much of this article before the PPP’s last outing at Babu John, but given the outcome of the coalition negotiations the PPP’s approach was predictable. Perhaps because the nice Ms. Harper was there, the leadership behaved relatively decently. If so, I hope that she continues to have this kind of sedative effect upon it. Of course, I know that this is a wasted hope and that the worst is yet to come, particularly in the bottom-houses largely away from the public gaze.
While we are on Babu John, Cheddi Jagan and an election in which much is rightly being made of financial impropriety, it might be useful for the opposition to reflect upon the contention that stealing is not the worst crime in politics and that political naivety is much worse.
Jagan, whose financial rectitude few would question, claimed that his actions in the 1950s, which resulted in the loss of scores of lives and countless properties, were due to “youthful exuberance”.
Indeed, he was only in his thirties when he began to pay for his failure to properly assess the position of his poor and piddling nation in the general scheme of international politics.
For better or for worse, the alliance is now the only feasible alternative for our preventing the dangers of an ethnically based government being in office for more than quarter of a century.
My next and final step is to consider what the preferred solutions were and then provide suggestions which may help to make the current situation arrive at a result that is beneficial to all Guyana.
henryjeffrey@yahoo.com
