There should really be no surprise that the two old warhorse parties continue to maintain their grip on the nation’s political consciousness. Any hope there was of an evolving third-party sentiment among the voters of Guyana was dashed by the conduct of the AFC, whose members displayed a greater affinity to the perks of power than an adherence to the principles they themselves had articulated. After that fiasco, no one was confounded by the fact that the plethora of small parties which offered themselves as electoral options on March 2nd, all did very poorly.
Those which did best were ANUG, the LJP and the TNM, which in January this year agreed to join their list of candidates so votes cast for the three of them in the 2020 election could be counted collectively. They still contested as separate parties, their ballots being combined only at the tabulation stage, but by this novel approach they hoped to increase their chances of obtaining a parliamentary seat. This proved a perspicacious move since the joinder did secure them a seat in the National Assembly, the only alternative political grouping to achieve this. The arrangement was that their nominees would each fill the parliamentary seat in turn, the first of them being Mr Lenox Shuman of the LJP.
Perhaps out of political naivete, Mr Shuman soon confirmed the public’s suspicion about the motives of third-party candidates by accepting the PPP/C offer of the deputy speakership. Neither of the other joinder parties has ever had anything to say about this. But now it is the turn of the TNM to come into the spotlight. On Friday we reported that six of the executive members of the party had resigned because of what they described as attempts to mix private interests with national politics.
The six members are not insignificant figures in the TNM; they include its Prime Ministerial candidate and Representative of the List Dr Gerald Forde and Party Secretary Dr Josh Kanhai. Their criticisms are directed at leader and Presidential candidate, Dr Asha Kissoon, and financier Dr Turhane Doerga. In a letter to the party Dr Forde described the TNM as having become “inept”, going on to say that this was “largely due to faction formation, character (assassination) within the leadership of the movement [and the employment of] undemocratic principles by Dr. Kissoon and Doerga.”
The accusations in part relate to an oil and gas company called GuyEnergy, which was created by Dr Doerga, and of which Dr Kissoon has been made a director. For her part she told Stabroek News that, “GuyEnergy is a completely separate entity to TNM. Forde is bitter that he was not invited to be a part of GuyEnergy and quite frankly that’s his problem… The issues that led to their resignations are normal internal issues faced by any political party and if he can’t handle these internal issues then he can’t lead a country… TNM will move on.”
There were other sources of friction as well. A critical one appears to have been the protest action by front-line health care workers, and the request by Dr Forde for the party to take a position in support of them. The TNM itself was formed by doctors and health care professionals, so the question was not one which was irrelevant to their interests. As we reported, it was this issue which appears to have been at the bottom of the allegation that some of the leaders had aligned too closely to the PPP/C since the election, and that this had corrupted the party’s internal politics. Dr Forde claimed that members had lost the ability to think and act critically and independently for fear of souring their relationships.
Dr Kissoon, however, was reported as expressing the view that his request in relation to the health workers had originated from “PNC interference” and that the protest should have been resolved by dialogue, which in the end it was. Then there was the motion on the Black Lives Matter movement, which produced her response that “all lives matter,” among other things.
There were accusations from some of the other executives as well, which revolved around the vilification of members by the Presidential candidate. Dr Kanhai told this newspaper that the executive had voted to suspend Dr Kissoon from the party, but found themselves facing suspension instead when she and Dr Doerga took control. In addition, the six executives had been threatened with legal action, so they thought it would be better to resign.
What the public will notice immediately is that even in confrontational exchanges between members of a third party, the names of the PNC and PPP loom large. It is testimony to the amount of political space they continue to occupy, even in small havens which have officially, at any rate, rejected their brand of politics.
The TNM was launched in November last year, boasting a new vision for the country and young leaders in key positions. The Presidential candidate said the party was “brand new with new ideas, new mentality and a new crop of young professionals” who were willing to propel Guyana into becoming the manufacturing hub of South America and the Caribbean. “For the past fifty-five years,” said the TNM website, “the country has been led by political parties who divided the land with racism, encouraged nepotism and thrived on an oligarchy system riddled with corruption at the highest office. This needed to change…”
So much for idealism.
The party’s high point was when along with its partners in the joinder it urged the coalition to concede in the aftermath of the election, and in July rejected overtures by APNU+AFC for “dialogue” on the way forward for Guyana since it was not a legitimately elected government. After that crisis was over, the TNM like all the other small parties was thrown back on its own resources, and probably found it had little to sustain it. There was possibly no one – or at least, hardly anyone – in its ranks with political experience, and while its leaders no doubt worked well together in a medical setting, functioning in the political arena is an altogether different matter.
Political parties over time build up experience in how to manage, and have an organiser who can fashion the party machinery and establish groups in as many parts of the country as is feasible. They will have a constitution as well as protocols on how to proceed in a variety of situations. Modern leaders cannot afford to take the authoritarian route, especially in new parties, and have to be able to apply the rule book when there is discord. Open disaffection on any scale will undermine a small party’s standing, and in some circumstances, might even sound its death knell in due course. Most of all, perhaps, there has to be agreement in a party on policies; they cannot just cruise along on the ideal but impractical concepts with which they fought an election. It is true that the AFC contested the 2015 election on some very clearly framed principles and policies; their problem is that they ignored all of them when in office with APNU.
In short, a new party has to have a purpose, and that purpose has to be apparent to the public if it is to have any impact over time. No one knows what the TNM stands for, and it will not help its reputation that it has now lost six of its executives. In an ethnically divided society, Mr Shuman has the advantage at the moment of seeming to hold a torch for the Indigenous people, however that works out, while ANUG has always had a cause in the form of its radical, if somewhat eccentric proposal in respect of constitution reform.
The recent events in the TNM must leave at least one, if not both of the other parties in the joinder feeling just a little uncertain. The arrangement was just a device to limit the domination of whichever of the large parties was the winner of the poll, and ensure that a third party had a voice. The agreement did not require any integration of views; as said above each party fought on its own platform. The TNM, its truncated form notwithstanding, will still qualify to occupy the joinder’s parliamentary seat for 80 days. ANUG will probably have no idea now about how it will discharge its parliamentary responsibilities, and how it will vote. Then again, it probably does not have much idea in the case of Mr Shuman either, more especially since he has been made Deputy Speaker.
Third-party politics still has a way to go in this country before it can make an impact again.