Latest update March 29th, 2024 12:59 AM
Nov 25, 2015 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
The PPP leaders are moving in circles. But they are not circling the wagons. The PPP is ending up where it started. The PPP is not going forward or backward. It is moving in a circular fashion.
The existing leadership has run out ideas. They are using the same failed strategy now that they are in opposition, as they were using when they were in government in 2011 and in 2015.
The targets of their attacks then were the two principal leaders of the Alliance for Change, Moses Nagamootoo and Khemraj Ramjattan. That strategy was to attack these two gentlemen so as to isolate them from the electorate and thereby reduce the AFC’s support. This did not work in the 2011 elections and the PPP quite inexplicably repeated the same old failed strategy in 2015 and ended up losing power.
Now that they are in opposition, the same strategy is being used. The attacks are incessant on Nagamootoo and Ramjattan. The PPP has learnt nothing as a result of its election results.
The PPP is caught in this circular mode because its politics is obsessed with personalities. It is concerned more with these two individuals and cannot see beyond that. It wants to make these guys out as being the reason why the PPP lost power.
In this regard, the PPP is behaving like an ostrich with its head in the sand – it is refusing to acknowledge reality. The reason why the PPP lost power in 2015 is because the attacks on these two AFC personalities galvanized rather than split the AFC’s support base.
The PPP cannot hope to split the AFC’s support base by targeting the AFC leaders. If the PPP feels that the votes it needs to win the next election has to come from disaffected AFC supporters, the worst it can do is to attack the leadership of the AFC. When the leadership of a party is under attack from external forces, the supporters of that party close ranks. The supporters of the AFC closed ranks in 2011 when the party’s leaders came under attack and they closed ranks again in 2015.
APNU and the AFC have in turn, since the coalition took office, made Bharrat Jagdeo a special target. They understand the threat that he represents. He is no pushover. And like what the AFC supporters did when its leaders were targeted, the PPP supporters did when Jagdeo was targeted; they closed ranks behind their leader.
It is not that Bharrat Jagdeo is so much loved within his party. He does have significant support nationally, but the very fact that he was attacked and targeted by APNU and the AFC allowed the supporters of the PPP to close ranks behind him.
The same thing has happened to the leadership of the AFC and APNU who are being attacked. Yet the PPP persists with this dumb strategy. They do so because they are lost about what to do.
The answer is simple. If the strategy of the PPP is to win over disaffected supporters of the AFC, then the PPP’s game plan cannot be to attack the leadership of the AFC. The PPP’s game plan has to be to sow division within the AFC; the PPP’s game plan has to be to allow for a power struggle within the AFC; the PPP’s game plan cannot be for the AFC to close ranks in the face of a common enemy.
The AFC has decided that it will contest the local government elections with APNU on a single ticket. The AFC may have had no choice, because it may not have wished to be humiliated by going it alone. It may have felt that it simply did not have the time to make a strong impact at these elections if it goes it alone.
The PPP’s strategy of isolating the AFC, therefore, will come up blank in the local government campaign, because the AFC vote is being cemented with that of APNU. The PPP felt in 2015 that many AFC supporters would not support the coalition if the AFC joined with APNU. The PPP and many others, including this columnist, were wrong in that assessment — yes the Peeper was wrong. It is not that the AFC supporters love APNU; they do not. It is just that they hate the PPP more.
The PPP, therefore, was the galvanizing force that led to the AFC supporters not breaking ranks with their party when it joined the coalition. They will not, so long as the PPP continues in its old ways.
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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