Dear Editor,
Even if one assumed your Sunday editorial “Campaign mode” to be well-meaning advice to Opposition Leader Aubrey Norton, you muddled things up by, first, forcing the complexities of the situation into your favoured but narrow narrative of Norton as a street politician; and secondly, by committing several acts of omission and commission.
Perhaps, the discussion of Mr Norton’s leadership style (or, more broadly, the coalition’s political operations) is best conducted along two intersecting tracks: (i) the political situation in Guyana under the PPP government, driven, as it is, by its sense of entitlement and its obsession with total political control, and (ii) the effective political tools available to the Opposition within the country’s winners-take-all political structure.
On the first track, the PPP’s style of politics has precipitated a crisis in governance and democracy in Guyana. Editor, your own editorials over the months have repeatedly observed with increasing alarm that (in your own words) “the PPP likes to control everything.” For instance, your editorial of 23rd April declared that “One Guyana… sounds more like ‘One Party Rule’”. That editorial also bemoaned that “the primary concern regarding the first years of the PPP/C administration (Part II) surrounds the principles of inclusionary democracy, accountability and transparency. On this there have been numerous failings.”
Evidence of crisis abounds: the exclusion of the Opposition nominees from the NRF; the politicization and manipulation of the GPF; the illegal concentration of power into the hands of the PPP Chair and Vice-Chair on the Local Government Commission; the miniaturizing of Parliament; and the termination of the services of professionals in institutions which the PPP wants to convert to rubber stamps to serve its business cronies. And on and on.
Compounding the gravity of the situation is, of course, the actual and perceived manner in which the PPP has been distributing our vast and growing oil revenues (who gets, why, when, how, and how much). Ralph Ramkarran, in his Sunday’s column “Inclusive governance is dead”, writes that the perceptions of African Guyanese are that discrimination and marginalization “are at their worst and the benefits of the oil wealth are being enjoyed only by Indian Guyanese and their allies.” He adds that “The reality to be confronted is that such a belief among African Guyanese is widespread, whether or not it has been contrived.”
Mr Ramkarran would have been more accurate had he stated that the perception of being left-out goes beyond ethnicity and intersects also with social class and status. Many rural Indo-Guyanese also feel financially excluded and insecure.
Throw into the mix the rising cost of living and the blatant high-level corruption, and what do we have? A country in crisis on all fronts. How then should Mr Norton conduct his politics with the political tools available to him?
At the outset, the Opposition Leader would be absolutely failing in his duties should his utterances and actions suggest to supporters and the nation that all is well and normal in Guyana. He would be failing should he not capture and represent the anger, frustration, and fears of the masses. He would be failing should he limit his political actions to wearing suits and attending embassy receptions. He would be failing should he limit his options to the formal mechanisms (such as parliament) that have been sabotaged and disempowered by government.
The SN editorial’s use of labels such as “street politician“ and “campaign mode” therefore misses the point. The point is that Mr Norton and the coalition have to fight the fight the PPP is bringing to them. They cannot walk with string to a gun fight. And if the PPP would stop at nothing in its cravings for total domination (including its lone resistance to a clean voters list), the country cannot then expect all smiles and handshakes from the Opposition. Sorry.
Yours faithfully,
Sherwood Lowe
