ELECTIONS.


The election date has been announced. Because it is just under four months away, the campaign will start slowly. The political parties represented in the National Assembly have all worked with exceptional commitment since the 2011 elections. They all expected elections before the end of the five year term and have all tried to position themselves to make as big an impact as possible whenever it happened.

These are the most important elections since 1992 when the then PNC Government was voted out of office in the first free and fair elections since 1964. The 1992 elections, as we know, were won by the PPP/C. It has won the majority in three successive elections thereafter but only the plurality, forty eight percent, in the elections held in 2011.  The results of the 2011 elections exposed the PPP’s weaknesses after nineteen years in office and it has struggled since then with a minority government, which has had no achievements of substance to its credit.

Continue reading “ELECTIONS.”

PARIAH


No matter how often it happens, no matter how much our ears become attuned to the ring of abuse in politics, Guyanese must never allow themselves to become accustomed to it or to be entrapped by it, and to succumb to the temptation of silence. The degeneracy of political and personal abuse has become the hallmark of the PPP’s methodology of political discourse.

Unless it stops, it will intimidate most into silence. For the few who are remain courageous enough, they will have to live, as many now do, with a constant, daily, stream of invective about their public and private lives and activities that defies any sense of rationality or decency.  Little do the perpetrators understand that it is they, not the victims, who the degradation eventually consumes. Cheddi Jagan suffered a lifetime of humiliation and abuse. So intense it was, and over so many decades, that it tempted good people to say that history would not have been kind to him. The opposite has happened.   

Continue reading “PARIAH”

THE TIGER ROARS


Saphier Hussain

In a recent advertisement, shown above, the National Independent Party (“NIP”), led by Mr. Saphier Husain-Subedar, until recently known as Mr. Saphier Husain, announced its intention to contest the upcoming elections. Mr. Husain-Subedar, a lawyer, was recently admitted to practice in Canada, which was the subject of a congratulatory advertisement in the press

Continue reading “THE TIGER ROARS”

NEGOTIATING THE COALITION


If the PPP/C is returned with only a plurality of the votes at the upcoming elections as in 2011, it could adopt the sensible course of inviting the opposition to join it in a coalition government. The PPP would be mindful of recent, salutary, experience in Sweden. The centre-left, minority, government of two months was forced to resign in early December because it did not get the support of the far right, Sweden Democrats, who wanted immigration to be further restricted. Also, a further gridlock is unlikely to be sustainable for more than a year this time around.

The PPP would, of course, like any other party obtaining a plurality, like to be in the majority in a coalition and may invite only one of the opposition parties to join a coalition. The obvious consideration in opposition strategy, if an invitation is forthcoming, is to ensure that it will have the same majority as it would have had in opposition. To avoid being in a minority, the opposition party may well insist that the other opposition party, its colleague over the past three years, be also invited to join which would give the opposition a majority in the coalition. A breakdown in the negotiations at this early stage may well lead to the Swedish Option.

Continue reading “NEGOTIATING THE COALITION”

2015


The electorate will be called upon in 2015 to decide the political shape of Guyana for the immediate future. The performance of the economy and resolution of social problems will be dominant considerations. The electorate will punish the party in office if it feels that its economic and social conditions have not improved. It did so when the PNC was in office. It did so in 2011. There will a significant enough shift in sentiment to affect the outcome of the elections if the electorate is sufficiently dissatisfied.

If it is, it is unlikely to accept the excuse that the Opposition did not support projects. The electorate’s response to any such allegation may well be that it sent a message at the last elections that there should be a coalition government, which the PPP had the power to implement, but which it ignored and, therefore, it has no one to blame but itself for an allegedly recalcitrant Opposition.

Continue reading “2015”