Changing political leaderships can sometimes be a problematic process, as Guyanese know. Mr Aubrey Norton’s accession as head of the PNCR but especially as Leader of the Opposition was not an altogether smooth process. A leader of the party is chosen during a Biennial Congress, and the 21st one was postponed initially owing to the pandemic, and then for various other reasons. When it finally took place in December last year Mr David Granger did not stand for the leadership, but his protégé Mr Joe Harmon did, and was handily defeated by Mr Norton. However, since Mr Granger was the Representative of the List and the newly elected leader was not one of the party’s parliamentary representatives, a long delay occurred involving all kinds of machinations and the need to come to agreement with the AFC before he could become Leader of the Opposition.
This all happened in the full glare of publicity, but how leaders are chosen in the PPP is less open to public scrutiny, although when Dr Cheddi Jagan was alive there was no question of any challenge being mounted by anyone else. Mrs Janet Jagan manipulated the system to get her choice (Mr Bharrat Jadeo) in place when she was still president. Under the constitution if a president resigns or dies in office, then s/he is automatically succeeded by the prime minister. That had happened for a few months after Dr Jagan died, when Mr Sam Hinds as PM succeeded him.
Mr Hinds, however, was a member of the Civic component of the party and would not have been allowed to stand as the presidential candidate in the general election which followed. Instead, Mrs Jagan was the candidate and he once again stood for the prime ministership. Before Mrs Jagan resigned in office, Mr Hinds submitted his resignation as prime minister, and the President then appointed Mr Jagdeo in his place. It was only after that had been accomplished that she stepped down, allowing Mr Jagdeo to succeed her as head of state. He then promptly reappointed Mr Hinds back to his old post. It was all something of a political charade.
What has transpired since Mr Jagdeo completed his second and final term is a bit less clear, although rightly or wrongly the public assumption is that he has considerable influence on who becomes the presidential candidate. Apart from anything else he has not relinquished his post as party leader. (There was an attempt for him to be allowed to run for a third term, but that was thrown out on constitutional grounds by the CCJ.)
So now it is Britain’s turn to go through its own charade. Technically speaking Britain votes for parties not prime ministers, although a popular prime ministerial candidate can help sweep a party into office, as was the case with Boris Johnson in 2019. Guyana too votes parties rather than presidential candidates into office, but after that the similarity ends. The UK has Cabinet government and the prime minister sits in the House of Commons, facing question time before the members every Wednesday.
Guyana’s president does not sit in the House of Assembly, and his (or her) party has very little control over his actions once he is in office. The chance to exercise authority over him resides only in the ability to choose the next presidential candidate once election time rolls around, and potentially deny him (or her) the opportunity of running again. While a party in opposition could change the leadership, there is no such possibility for them to do so once in government; as indicated above, the resignation, death or incapacity of a president is governed by the constitution, not party rules.
After Prime Minister Boris Johnson was forced into resigning by the defection of so many ministers and aides, not excluding two leading Cabinet members, the British Conservative Party had to trigger the process of electing a new prime minister. In reality what it does is elect a new leader, and once that is done he will automatically become the new prime minister.
This is not like the situation which obtains in the PPP whereby a president is not necessarily the leader of the party, an arrangement which dates back to its Stalinist-Leninist origins. The PNC has never separated the leadership of the party from the presidency. For Britain to change a prime minister per se, as opposed to a party leader, a vote of no confidence in the government would probably be required followed by an election, and no party in office is likely to follow that route.
As its current rules stand, the Tory Party stages a series of elections among its parliamentarians until the number of candidates is whittled down to two. After that the poll is transferred to the members in the various constituencies. While the vote among Conservative MPs can be finalised fairly quickly, it takes time to complete the campaigning and voting among members. Mr Johnson has invited some criticism from within his own party for not resigning immediately, but hanging on in a caretaker capacity until September 5th when a new leader, and thereby a new prime minister will be announced. His critics believe Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab, who was not a candidate, should have been appointed in a caretaker capacity, but Mr Johnson is typically resistant to relinquishing the reins.
It might be noted that the Labour Party rules for electing a leader are even more complicated than the Conservative ones, and accord a much smaller role to MPs, except where nominations are concerned. Elections are largely in the hands of the membership in addition to affiliated supporters, ie, the trade unions, an association which dates back to the founding of the party. In this country on all sides of the divide, the choice of leader is in the hands of party members either directly or indirectly, and there would be no point in it being otherwise. The parliamentarians do not represent individual constituencies which voted for them; they are chosen by the Representatives of the List, usually the party leaders, from lists which are presented on Nomination Day. The PNCR approach to electing leaders is more directly democratic than that of the PPP, which goes for an indirect approach through the Central Committee.
In the UK it has been argued by some Tory grandees that when a leadership election takes place in a party which is in office (as opposed to when it is in opposition) the final decision should not go to the members. In this case that is something in the region of 175,000 or so mostly white, older males (no one is really sure of the number) representing 0.4% of the total electorate. This is such an unrepresentative group the choice should be left to MPs alone, it is said. After all, they have been voted into Parliament by their various constituents, while the membership represents nobody as such, although it is effectively choosing a nation’s prime minister and not just a party leader.
Eleven candidates put themselves forward for election, of whom six were from minorities, and after the elimination process two remained in the last five – Rishi Sunak of Indian heritage and Kemi Badenoch of Nigerian heritage. Members of such groups have arguably a much better chance with the Parliamentarians than they have with the membership, although Ms Badenoch was unlikely to go much further with MPs because perhaps untypically, her views are very right-wing and her support came from the right-wing segment of the party in the House. The two candidates going to the membership are Mr Sunak and Ms Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary.
Slanging matches were quite in evidence during the campaign, which caused some MPs considerable disquiet because it highlighted the party’s disunity. Having said that, however, the exchanges had nothing of the crude character that is characteristic of our political campaigns, never mind some of our social media postings. In any event, watching how related democracies conduct their political operations can be informative for us, as we consider the kind of changes we would like to see in the structures under which we are governed.
