Alliance falling prey to our vicious political context

Properly engaging the PPP/C is the central pillar upon which this government will stand or fall and on which a good life for all of us depends. In recent weeks, there have been a few good signals, but they have also been confusing. I will next week consider the confusion more directly, but here I simply want to hint that it rests in my not being able to properly conclude whether what we are witnessing are divergent views within the coalition as to how to deal with the PPP/C, a maverick one-upmanship to quell a local situation or simply incoherence in the corridors of power.

Guyana’s political and ethnic future rests essentially upon elite cooperation between the coalition government and the PPP/C. There are many well-meaning persons on all sides who seek a solution for our bewildering social context in moral exhortation: Guyanese must learn to live with each other; teaching togetherness must begin in the home; every institution in society has a responsibility to urge unity upon us; we need to remould and rebuild our psyche; etc, etc.. From the very beginning of our ethnic conflict (our living together, some would say) these kinds of admirable suggestions have been around, but as the just concluded national elections indicate, from a political standpoint, they have not made much of a difference and this is so because they are not usually lodged in a relevant political framework.

20131106henryThere are too, particularly strong supporters of both the PPP/C and the APNU+AFC alliance, those who believe that their respective parties can successfully govern alone, but given the deprived state in which our political relations have kept us, their ranks are dwindling.

Many in the PPP/C have come to believe that that party has tried everything on its own and has been again hoisted by its own petard. From 1992, Cheddi Jagan and then Janet Jagan until her resignation tried their version of political cooperation but that did not stop the political antagonisms. Since then right up to its removal from office in 2015 the PPP/C believed that in order to rule as its majority gave it a right to, it had to dominate the political space but this only inflamed our already charged ethnic condition.

Once the heavy clouds of the extant geopolitical wrangling are removed, it is not difficult to see that the Forbes Burnham regime also fell to its political context. Looking back I believe that some of his innovative initiatives (consider his notion of the role of culture in society) failed largely because they were not bolstered by a similarly farsighted politics. Burnham did not properly appreciate his political environment and was finally brought down by a similar kind of frustration that floored the PPP/C and is likely to cause the demise of all those who fail to adequately grasp it.

Many supporters of the new government are so gung-ho about the new status quo that they believe the government can govern successfully alone. In my assessment, some of this attitude result from their horrified perception of what governance meant for them under the PPP/C. Indeed, whatever else they may disagree about, the vast majority of APNU/AFC supporters cannot envisage allowing the PPP/C back into government: free elections or not!

Thus, unless we wish the political situation to become even more threatening, the only viable option at this stage is some form of executive political accommodation. Indeed, such cooperation becomes even more urgent given the clear signs that, like its predecessors, the new government is inadequately dealing with its context.

Last week I gave an example of how, in the case of constructing the kind of public service the country requires, politics trumped the requirement of good governance. This week we have another example.

We were persistently lectured by those in the present government about the benefits of and the need for a democratic and depoliticised local government system. The previous regime’s insistence on appointing politically affiliated regional executive officers was criticized by the current incumbents as undemocratic, wrong and something that should not be countenanced. Now in government, the same people are even more blatant in their appointment of political REOs. When confronted by this obvious contradiction, they tells us that never mind the open and institutionalised political alliance of some of these REOs to the regime, ‘the new officers should be judged on their performance’ (New REOs should be judged on performance – Bulkan. SN 7/9/2015).

This is quite laughable when we consider the numerous ways in which a manager can act unfavourably towards those opposed to her political party without it being immediately noticeable. Even more importantly, we have here clear cases of public officers in a conflict of interest. ‘The question that should be asked is: would a member of the public who knew about this interest reasonably think that it might influence the decision? It is irrelevant that the decision maker is personally satisfied that the conflicting interest has been put out of   mind in arriving at a decision. The important thing is how the situation might appear to an observer’ (www.arc.ag.gov.au/Documents/ARC+Best+Practice+ Guide+2+Natural+Justice.pdf).

This about-face did not occur because the new incumbents are essentially inexperienced or wicked but because a quite reasonable assessment of their political requirements in a situation where the PPP won political control of 7 of the 10 regions drives them to this conclusion. Like its predecessor, the current government wants some significant say in the management of all the regions. It also wants to position itself so that the utilisation of regional resources can result in political/electoral advantage. In these circumstances, many of the government supporters would claim that the political appointments in the regions are sensible and necessary.

However, recent history should have taught that this approach amounts to the institutionalisation of conflict and persistent political quarrel at the highest level of the regional administration throughout Guyana. Anyone in the political fray who believes that the PPP/C, particularly in its present mood, has not already seen this opportunity and intends to fully exploit it, had better quickly excuse themselves lest they bring further disaster upon us!

Particularly in our ethnic condition, five years of political wrangling at the local level is most unlikely to win support for the regime in those regions that they have lost and will more than likely, as it did under the PPP/C, gradually send a generalised message of regime ineptitude.

The alliance leaders fought the election promising to work to establish a form of elite political cooperation and the signs are that they intend to keep that promise. Let us hope that they do, for already the alliance appears to be falling prey to our vicious political circumstances.

henryjeffrey@yahoo.com