An election date has not yet been hinted at, but the silly season has begun. Long suffering Guyanese will recognise it for what it is, having been subjected to it over and over again. It is that time, leading up to elections, when wild accusations and wilder promises are the order of the day. Some observers believe that Guyana is in a time warp; a constant rotation of silly seasons. Perhaps political scientists might want to undertake a study of that.
His overdone protestations to the contrary, PPP General Secretary Clement Rohee’s attack mode lets on that the party is definitely talking elections’ strategy. Mr Rohee gave it away weeks ago with his narrow flailing of the Guyana Elections Commission (Gecom) and its Preliminary List of Electors and his refusal to take cognisance of the fact that his failure to pay attention to and budget funds for updating a key agency like the General Register Office (GRO) had, unlike his coined goat, come back to bite him. There are two simple facts that Mr Rohee seems to have missed: (1) He is still the Minister of Home Affairs. (2) The GRO does fall under his mandate. Enough said.
There is no doubt that the calls for local government elections made the party restive. We don’t doubt either that it may have made others uneasy as well. Perhaps because several unknown quantities and some well-known ones too had given broad hints that they had more than a passing interest in the local government arena. In fact, some seemed to be procuring standards and armour and rounding up their cheering sections in order to join the jousting that now forms part and parcel of the elections’ period here.
However, the PPP’s unwillingness to chance a repeat of 1994—when Hamilton Green rode into City Hall on his one-trick pony, A Good and Green Guyana, long since hobbled—has led to endless pussyfooting. First, we had Minister Rohee’s ‘Gecom is not ready’ chorus. Second it was Local Government Minister Norman Whittaker, self-proclaimed speaker for all Guyanese, announcing that the people were not ready for local government polls. Bringing up the rear was President Donald Ramotar’s faux pas. Though he had claimed to want to hold the elections, he said he could not shut his eyes “… to the political reality that exists and make a bland promise that I will go to local government elections tomorrow as I would have done had we had the majority in the parliament at this point in time…”
With a looming no-confidence motion threatening to turn things upside down, Mr Rohee’s weekly press conferences have grown increasingly interesting, not so much for what he says as for what he refuses to say. But then this week’s took the biscuit.
It all started last week, when Alliance For Change Leader (AFC) Khemraj Ramjattan divulged his personal preference for that party’s election ticket: Moses Nagamootoo as presidential candidate with Nigel Hughes as his running mate. In the silence that followed, the grinding of the wheels in Freedom House were as loud as a music cart on a Sunday morning. And on Monday Mr Rohee galloped out of the stable scoffing at the suggestion that a Nagamootoo-Hughes ticket could dent his party’s support base and with a threat to expose Mr Nagamootoo’s “skeletons in his cupboard” in the lead up to any future elections.
The media, their own pens clicking in anticipation of what might be revealed, pressed Mr Rohee to expound on his statement. He then said that Mr Nagamootoo’s “skeletons” had been there since he was a member of the PPP and that more had accumulated after he had left and there was more to be disclosed. Clearly, Mr Nagamootoo is wrong for leaving the PPP and not only not taking his cupboard with him, but allowing more skeletons to accumulate in the three years since.
“So keep your powder dry and use it at the right time,” Mr Rohee added, confirming that when the campaigning actually starts, we can expect an explosion of the same nauseating fare we have been fed during the Bharrat Jagdeo administration: name calling and personal attacks.
One would have hoped that by now we would have reached maturity in our so-called democracy where political parties would use the hustings to sell their policies and plans for Guyana. A clean campaign is not too much to ask for, is it? We’re cleaning up Guyana, why not throw out the rancour, meanness and spite as well?
