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Mar 18, 2018 Features / Columnists, Hinds' Sight with Dr. David Hinds
By Dr. David Hinds
Not unexpectedly, the issue of the Cummingsburg Accord has been in the news quite a lot recently. This has, of course, been prompted by the uncertainty over how the parties would participate in the Local Government Elections (LGE) due later this year. While APNU has already announced that it would be contesting as a single group, the AFC which had floated the idea of participating separately had not made a final decision. But at its recent leadership meeting, the party decided to approach APNU to go to the elections as a Coalition.
Some detractors have since accused the AFC of flip flopping. I disagree. The AFC never said definitively it would contest the LGE on its own—it said it may. It couldn’t say yes, since LGE is not part of the Cummingsburg Accord. Now it has said that it would like to do so subject to agreement by APNU. Should the latter agree, this would necessitate either a new Accord or an amendment to Cummingsburg.
I think that the AFC has made a sensible decision. The dynamics of the current Coalition mean that should the parties contest the elections separately—AFC, PNC, WPA etc.–they would be fighting each other for the same voters. And that could create bad blood among them, which would then make it difficult for them to come together for the general election due less than two years later. It would be difficult to convince people that they are serious about Coalition politics if the parties fight each other at one election and then try to come together for another election. It should never be forgotten that it was the idea of coalition that inspired the parties’ supporters to believe that they could win—a belief that was critical to mobilizing them to go to the polls.
The only attraction for the AFC to contest the LGE separately is if it could be assured of getting a section of the Indian Guyanese vote. But from all indications, that is a long shot. It appears that the Indian Guyanese vote it got in 2011 and 2015 has, for varying reasons, returned to the PPP. In fact, the results of the last LGE proved that thesis—the Coalition lost badly in Indian Guyanese communities. So, from the standpoint of electoral survival, it makes sense for the AFC to want to avoid going alone. A dismal showing at the election could demoralize the party’s faithful and subsequently weaken the party’s bargaining position with APNU when the Cummingsburg Accord eventually comes up for renewal
I think the AFC has finally confronted the tenuous electoral fortunes of Third Parties in Guyana.
The party has been a victim of its own electoral success as a Third Party—it benefited from a political pragmatism that in our contemporary political environment has short-term appeal but is extremely difficult to sustain. What the Guyana case has revealed is that while sections of our ethnic communities periodically rebel against their respective parties, such rebellions are often temporary. Once the political and other related circumstances change and the parties adjust, the rebels often return to the fold. The UF and the WPA were victims of this phenomenon.
Remember, the AFC’s initial attraction was to some African Guyanese who were swayed by the promise of independence from the PNC which by 2006 had ceased to be a militant opposition to the PPP. Some African Guyanese did not accept Robert Corbin’s leadership of the party and begun to doubt the party’s ability to return to government. In that state of frustration, they turned to the AFC, which, under Raphael Trotman’s leadership, promised independence from the two big parties and the development of a Third Force. The AFC captured approximately eight percent of the vote in 2006 and in the process reduced the PNC to its lowest electoral showing ever.
But once Corbin and the PNC accepted the inevitable and began to aggressively court the WPA to form APNU, that dynamic changed. With the formation of APNU and Corbin’s decision to cede the leadership to Granger, African Guyanese at the 2011 election bolted from the AFC. Granger’s presence at the top of the ticket and WPA’s presence on the ticket made a tremendous difference in terms of mass perception of the Coalition. There was, therefore, no longer a need for the AFC from an African Guyanese perspective.
But that was not the end of the AFC. The change of leadership from Trotman to Ramjattan and the party’s recruitment of Moses Nagamootoo made the party palatable to sections of the Indian Guyanese community which had become embarrassed at and frustrated with the PPP’s excesses, but did not want to touch the PNC. The AFC’s promise of “Never PNC” resonated with them and the party repeated its success at the 2011 election.
But the success of APNU at the 2011 election and the PPP’s loss of its parliamentary majority presented a dilemma for the AFC. Should the party hold on to its “independence” stance and remain in opposition or should it join APNU to oust the PPP? It chose the latter. And it negotiated a Coalition with an APNU, which, despite its success in 2011, knew that it needed Indian Guyanese votes in order to remove the PPP. So, it too had to make some difficult choices—it had to concede much more to the AFC than it wanted to.
The birth of the APNU+AFC Coalition was difficult for AFC’s mostly Indian Guyanese voters, but some of them kept faith with the AFC, with the party’s promise that it would maintain its “identity” in government. But since coming to power, that has proved to be a difficult undertaking. The AFC has had to make the difficult choice between Coalition Stability and Party Independence. And it has clearly come down on the side of the former.
The political benefit to the party is that it remains in government with a sizable chunk of Cabinet positions and parliamentary seats. The political cost is that it has lost its Indian Guyanese constituency which threatens its survival as a potent force beyond the next election. That is the nature of Guyana’s complex politics.
So, now that the AFC has lost its limited electoral base, it has to make different choices—this is what to mind has driven it to request a joint ticket with APNU for the upcoming LGE. It is no secret that APNU has not been too eager to float a joint ticket with the AFC for the LGE, so if the AFC contests with APNU, it would be doing so from a weakened position. Unlike the case of the Cummingsburg Accord, it now has no demonstrated constituency to use as a bargaining chip. And APNU would be eager to use this new leverage as a dress rehearsal for the renegotiation of the Cummingsburg Accord
As far as the Cummingsburg Accord is concerned, I don’t think there is any need to rush a renegotiation at this point. These matters by their very definition move at a slow pace. The question one must ask is this—what does the AFC want from a reconstituted Accord that it doesn’t already have. It is generally agreed that the AFC got more from the Accord than it duly deserved—it struck a hard bargain and got quite a lot.
Once the government became entrenched, there was less and less reason to upset the status quo—that is a reality. So, I really don’t think that the AFC is overly eager to touch that Accord. It makes little political sense—the risks far outweigh the potential benefits. That is why the party, despite grumbles here and there, has been dragging its feet on formally approaching APNU for any renegotiation.
More of Dr. Hinds’ writings and commentaries can be found on his YouTube Channel Hinds’ Sight: Dr. David Hinds’ Guyana-Caribbean Politics and on his website www.guyanacaribbeanpolitics.news Send comments to [email protected]
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