It will be a strategic disaster for the President and the AG

Dec 20, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – I refuse to believe that the President and the Attorney General could be so politically naïve not to understand crucial aspects of realpolitik. In politics, it is important that a leader stay ahead of his opposition plotters. He/she has to do that or he/she will generate intense leadership challenges.
Cheddi Jagan was always behind Burnham and Burnham kept outsmarting him. Each time Burnham was in trouble, he used the Jagan card which Jagan allowed him to. Boris Johnson literally brought down Prime Minister, Theresa May, because he was always a step ahead of her, knowing full well that the Conservative Party wanted a harsh EU withdrawal agreement.
The Democratic Party outsmarted Trump, that up to this day, he cannot recover. Trump believed that the Democrats were going for a radical candidate like Elizabeth Warren and he, Trump would have used the socialism ghost to win. Trump had no idea that the Dems would have picked a middle of the road politician – Joe Biden.
The Dems outsmarted Trump again by selecting a Black woman as Vice President. The Dems knew that two white candidates will share the white votes equally between Trump and Biden but a Black running mate will bring out Black America in colossal numbers, something that did not happen for Hilary Clinton. Biden won some close contests because of the large Black turnout in some states.
Now here is what Lenin once wrote that has become one of the anthems of the PPP because Cheddi Jagan quoted it millions of times to his protégés. One of them – Gail Teixeira – is still around and is in the PPP leadership. Lenin observed that you must “take one step backward in order to take two steps forward.”
The backward step the PPP must take is to inform the leader of the House not to put the new version of the Carrington Bill on the Order Paper. The Carrington Bill was the amendment to the anti-narcotic legislation that was drafted in 2016 by Nigel Hughes, accepted by the AG, Basil Williams, put on the Order Paper to be read in the name of AFC parliamentarian, Michael Carrington. It upped the legal amount of possession, did away with compulsory jail on conviction if the possession was a small amount, and allowed for bail in cases of trafficking. The Bill never made it to life. It died long before its sponsor, the AFC died.
Now the AFC is bringing back the Bill, this time in the name of Sherod Duncan, who is the AFC’s version of the PNC’s James Bond. In Guyanese politics the most ghoulish manifestations become normal. For five years, the AFC was part of the government and one of its top guys, the Prime Minister was Leader of the House. The AFC killed its own Bill.
The AFC is out of power and the AFC is bringing back the amendment as a Private Member’s Bill. It is premised on the promise of the PPP when it was in opposition it would have voted for Carrington’s Bill. That is asinine thinking. The President and the Attorney General should tear up the Sherod Duncan amendment and compose their own.
Even a school boy that cannot spell the word parliament would know that is absolute stupidity for the PPP government to approve the Duncan Bill. The reason is basic to the politics of pragmatism. It is giving a dead party the medicine of rebirth.
The AFC admitted through a published letter in this newspaper by its chairman, Raphael Trotman, that from 1966 to 1992 and from 2015 to 2020, the PNC served its African constituencies to the exclusion of other ethnic communities and the PPP did the same from 1992 to 2015. It was an admission that the AFC in government was not a re-shaping factor in the life of this country. For more on Trotman’s confession, see my column of Monday, December 14, 2020, “The sickening admission/confession of Raphael Trotman.”
The AFC is going to parade itself throughout the country telling the young people what it did for them. What would be concealed in this masquerade is the AFC’s five-year old opportunism when it refused to pass the amendment. My advice to the PPP is to tear up Duncan’s Bill, put it in the dust bin and ask the Assembly’s Clerk, Sherlock Issacs, to summon Puran Brother’s Disposal to take the stuff to the dump site at Haags Bosch. The Attorney General should compose his own amendment and use its majority in the House to pass it. Then it should emulate Trinidad. On legalizing marijuana, Trinidad released those convicted of small amounts and expunged their record of conviction.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)