When the historians of the future look back on 2009, they may well view it as one of those ‘catalyst’ years that set up the conditions for change in the political firmament. Exactly what form that change might take is impossible to predict; there are just too many uncertainties in the mix for anyone to hazard a reading of the tea leaves at the moment. All that can be said is that certain openings have suggested themselves, and certain sagas which dominated the news earlier in the year remained unresolved at its end. These may have appeared to fade away, but they will almost certainly come to life again at some point, although what shape they might assume is again a matter for speculation.
Since the direction of things is murky, the country enters 2010 as it left 2009 – in a state of suspension of sorts. There will, everyone presumes, be local government elections next year, and at some stage after that, national polls, but the knowledge – or at least, the expectation – that these events will take place tells us little about likely political developments.
It was Mrs Jagan’s passing earlier this year which potentially could rearrange the stars in the PPP cosmos, and open a fault line in a party notorious for its monolithic structure. It was not that she was really active in political affairs latterly; she was not responsible for the day-to-day running of affairs at Freedom House, for example, and her duties in general were probably fairly limited. But that is not the point; her power lay in the symbol she represented, the lingering elements of the earlier force of her personality, and the aura which came with her connections to the foundation of the PPP and its predecessor, the PAC.
Even when she was alive, she had been witness to a fissure in the party fabric, which in her younger days she would not have tolerated. As long as she maintained a presence at any level in the political sphere, however, there was at least the semblance of a unified front, and she most likely would have been able to impose her influence or at least function as a kind of casting vote where the matter of choosing a presidential candidate was concerned. But there is no one of her stature, let alone her iconic status, now left in the PPP. And the fissure that was evident at the end of her life is even more obvious now, with the Young Turks answering to their base camp in Vlissengen Road on the one side, and the Old Guard still manning the citadel in Robb Street on the other. As always in this kind of situation, one assumes that there must be some who cannot be accommodated fully within either camp, or who perhaps have a foot in both.
Mr Donald Ramotar is the PPP General Secretary, which in a Marxist-Leninist party equates to the leadership post, and by virtue of that fact he has expressed an interest in running for the presidency. With Mrs Jagan now gone, it might be expected that other ambitious Freedom House stalwarts would reveal themselves, leaving Mr Ramotar little room for complacency, but it could be that with the evolution of two distinct groups becoming more evident, the General Secretary’s Old Guard colleagues will rally around him. In a ‘High Noon’ confrontation between a Young Turk candidate on the one hand, and an Old Guard one on the other, however, no one outside the PPP would be able to say who at this stage would be likely to prevail.
And if a Young Turk did become the PPP’s presidential candidate, would the Old Guard machinery work with the same enthusiasm to have him (one imagines it is unlikely to be a ‘her’ for the moment) elected? Would there be any elements working against him, even on a limited scale? And would it, further down the road, lead to a restructuring of the party and the phasing out of the Old Guard as well as a formal severance from the PPP’s ideological roots?
In the meantime, no one really knows either exactly how the public drama which began in a New York courtroom will play out in the long term. The revelations of suspected government links with a convicted drug baron have had no apparent impact on the PPP’s constituency, for reasons which are too well known to bear repeating; however, the various cases may have fall-out in unexpected directions further down the line. Certainly this is not a society known for its political confessions, and one would expect the administration to proceed into the New Year with its time-honoured approach in these situations – continue to deny when questions are asked, and then ignore the matter and carry on as if nothing had happened. However, events in this department are not under the government and the party’s control, and history has a way of sometimes behaving like a jack-in-the-box, and jumping out to surprise amnesiacs when least expected.
The problem for the government – and by extension, the party – is that it doesn’t matter whatever commendable work it might be doing, the accusations in relation to the Roger Khan case will not go away; they go to the heart of the ethical underpinnings of its administration. Add to that the torture cases and the criminal activities of some members of the joint services, and the impression conveyed is of a government which is not in control and which has sacrificed larger moral principles on the altar of expediency. Once that moral authority has been lost, as the PNC discovered before it, it cannot be regained no matter what good works are done, unless the issue is addressed directly and honestly.
As for the main opposition party, the fissure there is more like a major rift, a situation which is no secret. As it is, however, it is difficult to see how the party can ever be revived with its intellectual and more serious-minded wings amputated, and with some segments of its constituency regarding it with utter indifference. It too can never redeem itself with allegations of the rigging of its own party elections swirling around, and with the perception conveyed in the case involving Mr Mervyn Williams, that it functions for one ethnic group alone. Of course, the disarray in the PNCR was apparent long before 2009, but its disintegration accelerated this year, and there is now a possibility that if there is no leadership change and reorientation of party objectives, it could even lose its status as the largest opposition in parliament following the next general election.
At the very least, if it couldn’t get the vote out in 2006, it will be even less able to do so in 2011, let alone for local government elections. Exactly what 2010 will bring in terms of the PNC, therefore, is also shrouded in uncertainty at the moment, and depends in the first instance on the response to the leadership crisis by all the players involved.
The only other viable party in parliamentary terms, is the AFC. While obviously its fate is partly in the hands of its leaders, who given the problems in the two major parties have been presented with an opportunity which was not around before, it still does not have full control of its destiny. What its best options will finally turn out to be will be partially dependent on what happens in the PPP and PNC.
Be all of that as it may, the one enduring factor in the political situation if the ethnic fault lines retain their dominance, is the Amerindians. It must be said that they have not voted as a bloc since Stephen Campbell’s day, but still, no one, not even the PPP/C comes into office without the help of at least some of their ballots. Surprisingly, it is only the PPP/C which appears to have done its demographic arithmetic and has any awareness of this simple calculation. If ethnic voting continues to hold sway for some time into the future, then the day the Amerindians become politically conscious as a group and cease to operate within their regional and/or tribal enclaves, will be the day they will truly hold the political balance of power in this land.
