Latest update April 18th, 2024 12:59 AM
Dec 24, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
There were developments, recently, which suggest that the same elements which were mainly responsible for the ruling party’s failure to gain a parliamentary majority may once again be leading the party in a direction that is at odds with the initiative taken by the government.
The most significant of these developments concerned the position adopted by the ruling party to the talks by APNU and the AFC concerning the election of a Speaker of the National Assembly.
The ruling party argues that by convention it should be entitled to the Speaker’s Chair. But the ruling party knows and has been around long enough to know that conventions are not things that the PNCR has ever shown any respect for and therefore it is very naïve for the PPP to believe that it stands any chance whatsoever of gaining the nod when it comes to the election of the Speaker of the Assembly.
The AFC wants its candidate and APNU want theirs. So there is a gridlock and it will require one party siding with the other. Since the PPP is out of the equation when it comes to gaining the nod for the Speaker, it has to decide where it will throw its weight.
But traditionally the PPP has sided with the PNCR when it comes to locking the AFC out of contention for power. This happened after the 2006 regional elections where these two bitter archrivals found common ground in denying the AFC important chairmanships in certain regions.
Both parties have historically needed each other to survive. And right now the AFC is the common enemy of both the PPP and APNU. It is in the interest of both parties to weaken the AFC since it is from both parties that the AFC pulls its support and as the last election has shown this support has now grown beyond the AFC’s middle class base. As such the substantive power base of both APNU and the PPP is now being threatened by the AFC.
Logically, therefore, it is to be expected that the PPP and APNU should be the ones who should be meeting to isolate the AFC. But this is not happening. In fact, the very unexpected is happening. APNU is engaged in serious discussions with the AFC and this the PPP finds very strange since a strong AFC will undermine APNU just as much as it will the PPP.
The PPP therefore is finding it very difficult to accept these talks and is now throwing a fit. Its most recent statement also suggests that the approach to the growing rapprochement between the AFC and APNU is upsetting the very elements within the PPP who were principally responsible for the failure of that party to gain a parliamentary majority. Totally against the run of initiatives being undertaken by the government, the PPP has issued a statement claiming that by convention it ought to be entitled to the Speaker’s chair .
The real purpose of that statement of course is to try to scuttle any progress between APNU and the AFC because this will only make the AFC stronger. The ruling party has to be careful that it does not speak at odds with the cordiality that has developed between the government and the opposition parties. There is a need to rein in that recent statement because it represents an attempt by worn forces within the PPP to scuttle the recent progress that was made between the government and the opposition and which was intended to be developed this past week with the exchange of priority areas for discussion. There now seems to be some plan to put a spoke in these developments and it for the President to issue some clarification as to why his party is taking the position it is now taking.
The sooner this is done the better and the sooner those forces which caused the PPP to not gain a majority are put out to pasture by their membership the better it will be for the party and the country as a whole.
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