In defeat the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) could have asked for no better opportunity to depart the political centre stage on a dignified note, to make itself an integral part of the start of a process designed to help repair a political landscape blighted by an unending power struggle.
There could have been no mistaking the fact that a point had been reached − somewhere between the conclusion of polling on Monday May 11 and, at worst, some time on Thursday, after Gecom had announced the preliminary results − when it became clear that the 2015 poll had been done and dusted. At that point the then president, Donald Ramotar, could have begun the process of charting a new set of protocols for national political behaviour by publicly conceding defeat, congratulating President David Granger and re-committing to the development of the country.
Even amidst the euphoria and jubilation of the coalition’s thousands of supporters across the country, such a gesture would have caught the attention of this nation. It would have, in the first instance, resulted in a much earlier evaporation of the tension that had descended on much of the country since the wait for a result to the elections had begun. Equally, the gesture would have been seen as a signal that the PPP was prepared to be part of a paradigm shift to new standards of political behaviour.
It would, too, have gone some way towards compensating for a bitter and sometimes downright outrageous campaign that did much to expose the still virulent divisions in our country.
But it would have done a great deal more. It would have sent an encouraging signal that after decades of wallowing in a graceless political culture we are, perhaps, ready – almost a year to the day away from our 50th Anniversary as an independent nation – to turn a new page.
A point was reached late last week when former president Ramotar appeared to have lost any sense of reason, to say nothing of the squandered dignity of the office that he held. He came to bear an uncanny resemblance to the mythical Emperor who alone in all his kingdom was persuaded that in his nakedness he was fully clad. That could well have been the lowest moment in his political career.
Things descended decidedly into the realm of comedy when, even as the former president was continuing to rail about “dodgy” statements of poll and about dark conspiracies to steal the elections some of his ministers were publicly conceding that the game was up and were – by returning state property to the state – seeking to salvage such dignity as they could from political defeat. The paradox seemed to create an interlude of madness in our country that will doubtless be replayed in theatre in time to come.
All of this was playing out in the full view of the diplomatic community and a retinue of international elections observers who had long declared in unison that the process had been free and fair and that for the PPP, after twenty-three years in office, the people were asking that they surrender political power. After that too, Mr Ramotar persisted anyway moving the episode to a point of absurdity and compelling much of the nation to cease to acknowledge the authority of his office long before he had demitted it.
What went wrong had gone wrong long before the elections results came. The PPP had fought an elections campaign underpinned by the unwritten notion – articulated by the party’s General Secretary Clement Rohee − that loss of power was simply inconceivable. It was that notion, chiefly, that caused reason to take flight in the face of defeat.
Protracted exposure to near unchecked power can have negative consequences. The PPP it seems, did not perceive itself out of office. Accordingly, it was inevitable that accepting defeat would take time. In circumstances where effective continuity is such a critical requisite as far as the preservation of the state is concerned, it took far too long.
In that testing period the PPP’s exercise in brinkmanship could hardly have been attributed solely to Mr Ramotar’s intransigence. It was clear that Mr Bharrat Jagdeo, whose inputs had considerably blighted the entire elections campaign, had been the mastermind behind the PPP’s attempt to remain in office and, after the electorate had nullified that effort, Mr Jagdeo, it seemed, was now seeking to infuse his own absurd intransigence into a most historic moment in the life of the people. That would never have been allowed to succeed though, in the process, the country’s longest serving president ever would have squandered what little had been left of what we had been led to believe was a cherished legacy.
One ponders, whether, above all else, this episode was not, perhaps, an attempt to test the resolve of the Guyanese people to turn a critical corner in their history and to drag us to a political place from which there may well have been no easy return.
