Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:52 AM
Sep 17, 2017 News
When it comes to the “Cabinet-supremacy” model, Executive Member of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), Dr. David Hinds, believes that parties within the coalition administration must speak up on certain matters or else
“we will all suffer.”
The political analyst made this, among other statements, in his recent writings.
Dr. Hinds said that he is worried the coalition is in trouble. In this regard, he noted that the PPP has over the last two years, been able to push its 23 years of devastation of Guyana’s politics and political landscape into the background of the popular consciousness. The consequence of this, he said, is that the PPP has succeeded in turning most of its own political sins on the government.
Another fundamental aspect of this picture, he said, is the fact that the PPP’s mission has succeeded largely because of the actions and non-action of the government.
Dr. Hinds stated that the government through a combination of frequent elementary political mistakes, lack of cohesive world-view and inability to push back against the PPP’s attacks, has allowed the PPP the space it needs to accomplish its mission.
“I argued that the adoption of a strategy whereby the government is administered as if it were a one-party government rather than a coalition has led to a narrowing of decision-making to the Cabinet and a concomitant sidelining of the coalition political parties from decision making and from influencing policy-making.”
He continued, “The consequence is that the government lacks political direction which in turn has affected the ability of the coalition to craft its own political narrative and to answer the negative coordinated PPP charges. The coalition parties—all of them— are powerless under this model. That is why they don’t speak to the media or hold public meetings because they are cut off from actual decision-making they have nothing to say.”
Dr. Hinds added, “Some PPP sympathizers have pounced on my point about treating the government as if it were a one-party government to push their age-old argument that the PNC has out-maneuvered the WPA and the AFC and is running the government as a PNC government.”
The WPA Executive Member said that he has no doubt that there are PNC members of the government who are never going to give up an opportunity to advance that party’s hegemony. Be that as it may. Dr. Hinds commented that it is important for one to pay attention to the substitution of the executive arm of the government for the political parties, including the PNC. He stressed that this model is not new.
Dr. Hinds asserted, “We saw Hoyte and Jagdeo use the executive to stifle and ultimately weaken their respective parties and we saw how that helped them to ultimately lose power. But the present governing crowd has not learned that lesson. I suppose what drives admirers of this model is a combination of fidelity to the centralization of power and belief in the top-down distribution of power.”
He continued, “This Cabinet-supremacy model is counter-productive. In the end, governments do not fight and win elections, parties do. What is interesting here is that the government leaders of the PNC, AFC and WPA have all enabled this model of cabinet supremacy and its attendant marginalization of the parties.”
Dr. Hinds added, “So, the charge of PNC hegemony ignores this reality—the PNC, as a party, is also marginalized by this model. In this regard the PNC, as a party, is being wrongfully blamed. The problem is that the Cabinet behaves like a separate political party that is not accountable to any entity outside of itself.”
The political activist stated that the WPA recently pushed back against this cabinet-supremacy model, largely because its non-governmental wing has more sway within the party.
But in the cases of the AFC and the PNC, he commented that the government ministers are the dominant leaders of those parties, so they are less likely to push back against Cabinet supremacy. And, of course, Dr. Hinds noted that the non-governmental wings of those parties are not as audacious as they should be—they suffer in silence while the ship is in distress.
“These parties have to do better than that or we will suffer the bitter consequences.”
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