Dear Editor,
There have been continuous calls for Guyana to have a new constitution. This call is well grounded as none other than the PPP was resounding in its call for a new one, while declaring the present one illegal.
I can recall the days when the WPA and the PPP called for a boycott of the referendum that was asking the people to support the new constitution. This call was obeyed by most of Guyana. In fact the day of the voting was a working day but it looked as if it was Good Friday. Even the members of the PNC stayed at home as they were opposed to the 1980 Constitution.
The question is, how can this be achieved? The constitution allows the party with the most votes to have the executive presidency thus giving full powers to a party that may simply have a plurality of the votes, not an overall majority.
Now after so many years the PNC was unable to win the elections and remained in the opposition. The AFC came on the scene relatively recently but performed reasonably well at the polls. Now the fact that the once seemingly invincible PPP has been reduced to a minority status demonstrates clearly that there is increasing disillusionment with that party. There is also growing disillusionment within the ranks of the PNC. What is clear is that the people are fed up with these two parties and want change. The 1980 constitution makes this change a real possibility, for a challenger to the PPP could obtain the presidency with a vote share way below 50%.
It is very possible that the AFC could garner this at the next elections, and this accounts for the concentrated propaganda against the AFC. The PPP’s entire enlarged propaganda apparatus is concentrating its venomous attacks on the AFC, resorting to all sorts of tactics inclusive of outright lies and distortions.
It seems to be dawning on the populace that they need a break from the control the two parties have held over their lives ‒ a type of control that convinces the leadership of these parties that they own us, that we are their property. The cracks are already showing. The Africans demonstrated this capacity in the election before the last while the Indians because of fear stayed put. The Indians demonstrated their capacity to break at the last elections, but I guess the Africans went back because the Indians maintained their support for the PPP at the previous elections.
What is fact, however, is the clear demonstration that these groups have the capacity and willingness to break from the parties that have exercised ownership over them through the years.
History is replete with examples where Africans and Indians struggled together, marched together, were shot down together in defence of their common interests. Today we have once again come to recognise the need for united action as the rich get richer and the poor poorer, with the cost of living squeezing the life-blood out of the majority of the Guyanese people.
One line of action if we want to be certain that we can fix the political landscape is to change the constitution, but we cannot do so as long as the PPP is in power and the PNC is satisfied with the perks of being in opposition. I am suggesting one way forward which would entail that the PNC, which cannot ever win an election given the way political choices are exercised by the electorate, places Guyana first and so demonstrates by agreeing to stay out of the next elections. In order to do this early the opposition can force new elections.
The condition is that the AFC wins and its first act would be to throw the country into constitutional reforms which will be voted into place by a referendum. Soon after new elections would be called under the new constitution.
Should the AFC stay out, the two-party system would entrench the group that now controls the PPP.
Yours faithfully,
Rajendra Bisessar
