Dear Editor,
Here we are again, skipping down the road to perdition. Some who welcomed the Cummingsburg Accord for the sake of triggering change, limiting the outsize presidential powers they had condemned under the PPP and shifting to a more democratic form of governance are now openly ridiculing this very accord. They assert the Cummingsburg Accord is a private contract and that it does not supersede the law of the land; the same constitution they say, needed to be changed when the PPP was in power. They celebrated this coalition and this accord. Now, it seems they only wanted the accord and coalition for the sake of power, not for the sake of introducing some level of democratic resiliency to this country.
The Cummingsburg Accord was not a private contract. It was a public deal, hinged on the approval of the majority of this country, as verified by the election. It was publicly broadcast. It was the catalyst for many wavering over the PNC’s inclination to tyranny to give the PNC a chance. They would not have voted for this coalition if this deal had not been in place. It was a deal built on democratic expansionism, moving decidedly away from the totalitarian precepts of our current constitutional structure.
I remind them that country comes ahead of race or party. That the replacement of one despot should not blind us to the emergence of another, no matter how ethnically hitched or politically roped we are to the latter. I am going to say it now: we will likely not see democratic change from President David Granger. I was hoping he would succumb to the wisdom and tectonically shift this country in the right democratic direction. Alas, I was wrong. I should have known, as this is the very man who was a Forbes Burnham protégé. I wanted to look past the past few internal PNC elections where it has been alleged those processes were marred.
For a President to appoint a Minister of the Presidency who can attend cabinet meetings, and usurp the chairing of the cabinet from the Prime Minister in breach of the Cummingsburg Accord signals trouble. For those now newly minted masters of constitutional scholarship arguing constitutional rigidity and strict adherence since May 15, there is the question of where these acts will lead, regardless of their proclaimed constitutional sanctity. The question is that if President Granger is bold enough to breach the Cummingsburg Accord in such brazen fashion, knowing that this will bleed votes from the coalition, he now has to be prepared to go all the way to win power. If it means he is gambling on delivering such incredibly excellent governance that the people will look past these transgressions, the evidence to date does not suggest we are in for exceptional governance. While middling performance will seem exceptional against the backdrop of the PPP’s catastrophic failures, over time it will not be enough. In fact, with improved governance and greater prosperity from oil, there will be no patience for dictatorial government. With these acts, this government is going to collapse, if not from internal combustion, from external fission from its own supporters. If this government continues in this autocratic vein, it is only a reformed and cleansed PPP away from being battered in the next election.
Mr Granger knows the cloud of mistrust hanging over the PNC from the populace is humongous. That distrust is from a majority of the populace, meaning the majority of Indian, along with some Mixed and Amerindian voters. The PNC is always held to a higher standard on the issue of democratic passion, and unfairly so at times, particularly during the PPP’s recent reign. It is the curse of the Burnham presidency. A dance with authoritarianism is deadly to the future of this country, the coalition and more critically, to the future of the PNC/APNU. The past waltzes with despotism have shown it does not work in Guyana. It creates massive fractures in the existing fault lines, deepens ethnic triumphalism, retaliation and cronyism and dissolves the ability of the country, already too small, to organize a productive economy. David Arthur Granger has to take a serious look at the man in the mirror.
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell
