Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
May 24, 2015 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
In 1953 the People’s Progressive Party was swept into office on a nationalist bandwagon. The jubilation of that victory was short-lived; the Constitution was suspended and the multiracial PPP marked time until 1957. In that year it won decisively. This time divisions had split the party wide open. But yet the PPP won. Its rule from 1957 to 1964, seven years, was unbroken. But that rule was testy.
The PPP won the most seats at the 1964 elections. But it failed to secure a majority and the PNC combined with the United Force to force the PPP out of office.
The PNC ruled by fraud and deceit for twenty-eight straight years. Guyana did not witness another change in government until 1992 when the PPP was returned to power as the PPPC
The PPPC ruled Guyana for twenty-three years, the last five of which it did so without a parliamentary majority. It was defeated finally a few days ago when it lost to a coalition of opposition parties.
The point of this history lesson is to show that Guyana does not have a history of regular changes in government. People’s experience of government is therefore one in which one part rules for a long time. The PNC ruled for twenty-eight years, the PPC for twenty-three.
No wonder ethnic and political insecurity is so rife. The levels of political insecurity and ethnic insecurity would have been lessened if there were regular changes in government. One side would have known that it had the possibility of winning again soon and so it would have been more ready to accept defeat at the polls. Insecurity would have been lessened.
This is the danger that Guyana faces. Political parties stay in power too long. They get stale, their creative juices dry up, they divorce themselves from the people and they begin to assume authoritarian tendencies. In the end, they stay in power not because the people like them, but because the people are insecure. They have not experienced regular transitions of political power from one party to the next and therefore they are fixated on real and imagined fears.
The APNU+AFC coalition should give itself a lifespan of five years or ten years at the most. The Guyanese people, however, may not be keen on the coalition ruling so long.
The APNU+AFC coalition is a time-bound marriage. It can subsist for only so long and then the parties must go their separate ways.
New coalitions usually replace old ones. But in Guyana, the smaller parties have been decimated and so within the next five years there will be no new parties.
This coalition is not as solid as it pretends. There are deep divisions within the coalition and deep divisions within the respective parties that comprise the coalition. This was evident during the early days of the new government when it seemed as if only the PNCR was administering the State.
Eventually these individual parties will go their separate ways. There is only so much ambition that can be contained in a coalition. When the parties go their separate ways, it will allow for a more spirited political competition. The AFC should give the PNCR a run for its money.
It will be interesting to see who wins. The PNCR and the AFC will use their time in office to develop and strengthen their respective constituencies.
Both parties should not fear the PPPC. That party will not come back for a long time. It lacks effective leadership and those who should have resigned because of the loss of power are holding on to the strings to power in the party. They are however grasping at straws. The PPP is a sinking ship. It will not emerge again. The PPP has no leader capable of bringing it out of the crisis and irrelevance it now finds itself in. It is done, finished.
This demise of the PPP is a game-changer in Guyana’s political culture. It opens the floodgates to the AFC stealing a great many votes. But that is some years down the road and something that it has to be prepared for.
The demise of the PPP will not however remove ethnic insecurity. Only through regular changes in government will that insecurity subside.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
Apr 19, 2024
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