Societies and economies are fluid. Political parties must adapt to these “tides in the affairs of men” or else languish “in shallows and in miseries”.
Three brief examples: Latin American immigration has changed and continues to change American domestic politics; Covid-19’s econo-mic impact decimated the “austerity politics” of the United Kingdom’s Tory party that has spent 100Bn pounds on furloughed workers; and the widespread acceptance of recreational marijuana among the middle classes has compelled many parties to favour its legalisation.
In Guyana the discovery of oil in 2015 and the subsequent arrival of the industry on these shores is one such major event that shifts a country’s politics in a certain direction. It came after what had been a largely moribund era since independence marked mostly by financial crises and relentless migration. Big Oil’s economic impact is already being felt not only in the numbers -oil is now more than 50% of total exports – but more significantly in the multitude of private projects it is spurring in many other sectors. Georgetown is a tight knot of activity these days, heaving with flatbed trailers and construction sites. However there is an ambivalence. For some, especially the young people, they seem excited by the opportunities and jobs it has already created.
There is also a palpable anxiety among the country’s elite over the coming change, of a loss of control, a loss of culture and an apprehension of a new colonialist paradigm. We have seen this running like a drumbeat beneath the reams of letters and commentary on every aspect of the sector in the past five years. This has presented a challenge to both of the main parties. For the coalition the controversy over the renegotiated PSA could be seen as an albatross that contributed to its electoral defeat. The PPP/C rode the criticism to its ultimate benefit but now struggles to defend its own regulation of the sector. Digesting this industry economically, politically and even psychologically continues to be difficult.
Meanwhile the prospects and profits the industry promises have encouraged a growing confidence in the business class and spurred its projection into the political sphere. Between what it messaged prior to the election and what its members donated it was instrumental to the PPP/C election win and it now has unfettered access to the corridors of power.
The PPP/C is in lockstep with the business class as part of its transformation since the turn of the century. Whatever one’s opinion of him as a genuine nation builder, a young Bharrat Jagdeo must have recognised that the party’s base was not only the sugar worker or farmer but would increasingly become a rising mercantile class which had no truck with Marxist politics or interest in cane yields per hectare. Now in 2021 with the oil industry turbo-charging a business boom and setting the country on a firmly capitalist path, it is his party which is positioned to reap the benefits.
How are the other parties adapting to the new zeitgeist? Not particularly well. The Working People’s Alliance seems stranded in the 1980s both in the composition of its leadership and also in its failure to communicate the relevance of its founder’s writings that ironically are so de rigueur in Western circles these days.
The PNCR is utterly crippled by the events of the past three years, but at the same time is too ossified to wriggle free of its ignominious defeat. The seeds of this have been long in the making as they failed to make the generational shift Janet Jagan started in the PPP/C, and that Jagdeo has continued as witnessed by the young faces in the Cabinet today – Charles Ramson, Oneidge Walrond, Vickram Bharrat and Deodat Indar. Contrast this to the Coalition Cabinet which looked old and tired from Day One, with a formal and aloof President failing to communicate his ideas internally and externally while micromanaging the font size for government documents. Three and a half uninspiring parochial years from a party waiting for 22 years, only to be then cut off at the knees.
With the biennial elections upon them, we now hear of various schisms: petit bourgeois urbanite faction vs the grassroots. Perhaps these are just stories we tell each other to make sense of what is an internal party matter and should be respected as such. But one can’t help thinking that the real struggle needs to be generational in both style and substance: to craft a new party that speaks to a young electorate in a country that, despite every-thing, is in 2021 generally optimistic and forward looking. Young people have zero interest in hearing debates over events that happened 50 years ago. They want to know how that new road might get them to work on time.
The other aspect has been the falling off of the party’s traditional base of public servants as a result of the increasing entrepreneurialism within the country. There are few statistics for this but it would be hard to refute that many Guyanese of all demographics have discarded the labour force for self employment. As such the PNCR still does not seem in tune with what must be a large portion of its base who are not agitating for a pay raise but are more interested in lower import duties. Meanwhile a docile and similarly elderly union leadership has meant little contributions from a traditional ally. If it does not change, the party will face a future of permanent decline, and the country the prospect of continuing what has already been 15 months of feeble opposition and a government with a carte blanche. That is not good for anyone.
Maybe for the PNCR, the key to adaptation lies in the same A Partnership for National Unity coalition – a concept much maligned post facto but whose stated intention captured the imagination of many Guyanese. After their 2015 victory the failure of the APNU parties to actively manage, energise and market this coalition was a prime cause of its subpar performance while in government and for its severed term. Whoever wins the PNCR leadership race would do well to repair and reformulate the coalition, possibly allowing for more parity. For its part the Alliance for Change must also move to sweep aside its old leadership and find some political coherence and relevance.
It may look bleak for the opposition parties given that the PPP/C is “on such a full sea… now afloat” but the same fluidity means there is no guarantee of another two decades of unfettered PPP/C govern-ance. Rising incomes will mean new priorities for a growing middle class. Debates in a newly affluent Guyana will no longer be about class struggle or perhaps even about race. The struggle will be harder and more prosaic: how to deliver services such as water, health, education, energy and security to an increasingly demanding electorate. Neither party has done this credibly to date. Opportunities await for those who are alert and “take the current when it serves”.