With nomination day looming tomorrow, the average voter has thus far been dealt an uninspiring and deficient hand by the main contestants. A brief visit to any of the rallies and smaller public meetings held by either the PPP/C or APNU+AFC would be an underwhelming experience.
The PPP/C’s meetings have painted a fulsome picture of its achievements without presenting the arguments needed to balance the narrative. Particularly troubling has been the harking back to its traumas of the sixties and the seventies and dire warnings about what the PNC would do if it was returned to power as part of APNU+AFC. This is a most bankrupt strategy and detracts from the need to present a cohesive vision for the future. If the PNC’s past is what the ruling party is banking on to win the elections it is disdaining of the 18 to 35 cohort which has no first-hand knowledge of that period. How many of these persons and those older will simply take at face value that were this alliance to be elected, the AFC would be quickly booted out based on d’Aguiar’s experience with Burnham in 1964?
In the euphoria of its alliance, APNU+AFC has been left on the defensive in relation to the assaults launched on it by the PPP/C. These attacks pertain to the reneging on the commitment not to join up with either of the main parties, the prospect that Indo-Guyanese who voted for the AFC in 2011 would desert in droves and the forging of an alliance with a group whose rigged elections and other misdeeds have not been explained or atoned for.
Needless to say, both campaigns have been replete with vitriol and personal attacks. There is only so much that can be said about the chestnuts that have been introduced on the campaign platform. Guyanese deserve far better. This election is shaping up to be perhaps the most important since independence and its winner will face the challenge of many intractable problems that will require immediate and considered treatment. There is therefore no time to waste and the electorate must be given a full opportunity to dissect, discuss and challenge the stances of the major parties on the issues of the day.
Traditionally, parties have aimed to have this discussion within the confines of turgid, uninspired manifestos which are still to be issued though the PPP/C yesterday published excerpts of what it styled as its vision for the country. As useful as a manifesto can be, it is riddled with generalities and suffers from the limitation of believability. The prime example of this would be the PPP/C’s solemn promise in 2011 to hold local government elections within one year if it gained power. It went back on this despite an arduous campaign by civil society for it to honour its commitment. Its contrived excuses have not impressed the public.
Both of the main groups must set out precise and practical solutions to the many problems besetting the country. The PPP/C faces the burden of long incumbency. Whatever it is promising today will be met with the refrain `why was it not implemented in the years after the 1992 general elections’?
Nonetheless, both major competitors and others have to rise to the occasion. There must be defined and workable solutions to the vexing problems. These include how to expand real economic and job-led growth, how to grow the productive and services sector, the fate of the sugar industry and finding new and sustainable markets for rice.
In education, the profound problem of teachers’ pay leading to their migration must be confronted with the recognition that successive administrations have failed to come up with the answers. Significantly improving pass rates at English A and Mathematics must be on the table together with the ongoing woes at the underfunded University of Guyana.
The public will await with great interest proposals from both sides on constitutional reform particularly as it relates to the powers of the President, the method of electing the President and making the parliamentary system more effective.
In the security sector, the police have signally been unable to grapple with major crimes. The force specializes in prosecuting mainly small-time criminals. It has failed hopelessly in the cases that really matter such as the recent seizure of cocaine in charcoal at Linden. Surely there will be some fall guy for the discovery of the shipment even though the kingpins remain out of sight and will not be prosecuted. The Crum-Ewing murder has underlined the gross failure of the police and his name must be kept on the lips of all Guyanese as his killing symbolizes much of what is wrong with present day Guyana.
The PPP/C and APNU+AFC can begin elevating the campaign culture by presenting voter-friendly manifestos and then holding town hall-style meetings to explain in greater detail what they are trying to communicate. The public meetings have thus far been vehicles for repeating the colossal one-sided narratives of the two groups without delivering substantive information and plans to the public.
