Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jul 22, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Twice I wrote in these columns (may be more times) including as late as last week, that if a no-confidence is passed by Parliament, the Executive (the Presidency) will ignore it and will continue to rule without new elections. I wrote that opinion based on my analysis of the PPP in power since the reign of Bharrat Jagdeo.
I first penned that view early in 2013. Since then no citizen in or out of Guyana, has seen the need to publicly opine that the PPP will ignore a no-confidence vote Now last Sunday, the Stabroek News as represented by its Sunday editorial observed; “…one suspects that the Government’s Attorney-General will be asked to court around for legal impediments to acting on any no-confidence motion, should one be passed…The aim will be to find some kind of patina of legitimacy to justify ignoring it.”
So there you have it. One of Guyana’s most influential stakeholders holds the position that a successful no-confidence passage in the House may not see a presidential resignation and new elections. Stabroek News gave as its reasons, the past history of the PPP (in power). It does not take a professorship in philosophy to see what is taking place in Guyana is extreme power obsession.
It may have begun with Bharrat Jagdeo but make no mistake, if Cheddi and Janet Jagan had remained alive and in power, they would not have given up power if pressured by a no-confidence motion. This is not to say that Burnham would have done it. The man who did was Desmond Hoyte.
This action by Hoyte forms the basis for part two (forthcoming) of my analysis titled, “Hoyte was one of the best leaders in the post-colonial world.”
This has been the nature of the PPP all along (these past sixty years). And this will be the nature of the PPP until it loses power. Only two persons in Guyanese history understood this chemistry of the PPP – Forbes Burnham and Hamilton Green. Jagan rigged his own internal elections to weaken Balram Singh Rai. He rigged successive congressional elections to make sure his candidates were in the leadership.
Cheddi Jagan lost an election in 1964, and called a national wide strike by GAWU to protest the coalition between the other parties to form the government, something that is quiet normal in politics around the world since WW2. The action resulted in terrible violent mayhem perpetrated by both the PPP and PNC.
It is no accident that the PPP has not accepted even one motion composed by the Parliament of Guyana. Not the Opposition Parliament (there is no such thing) but the Guyana Parliament. What the PPP has told every citizen is that the presidency is a national office and that President Ramotar is the President of all Guyana but the Parliament is a partisan institution controlled by the Opposition.
By some incredible, acrobatic logic, President Ramotar belongs to no political party, has no affiliation to any political party and stands above partisan and party politics. But the Office of the Opposition Leader is not a national institution but a narrow political organization because after all, the Opposition Leader is the leader of the PNC.
This abject absurdity this country lives with every day accepts it every day and will continue to endure it if even there is a no-confidence motion.
The no-confidence motion may be a phenomenal piece of strategizing by the AFC. The PNC cannot be that naïve not to see the positive implications. The AFC is afraid to go into the streets for fear of giving the PPP a race weapon to beat the AFC with. The PNC is being blackmailed by the PPP because of fear of being branded as violent people who want to target Indians.
The PPP ignoring a no-confidence motion gives the AFC a water-proof motive for telling Indians why they are taking to the streets – the government is illegal in power and therefore hasn’t got the authority to govern therefore such protest becomes the only method of forcing them out.
But the PNC has greater reasons for going into the streets. PNC constituencies lost power by its party conceding a free poll in 1992.
How can the PNC tell its hundreds of thousands of supporters, including children, that it cannot do anything about an illegal government? And make no mistake – once the motion is passed and elections aren’t called three months after, the presidency becomes untenable.
And make no mistake, once the motion is successful, the PPP will resist it and then Macbeth’s witches come into play.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
Apr 19, 2024
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