Dear Editor,
As the nation awaits the declaration of the final recount to determine the winner of the March 2, 2020 elections, the fundamental question is whether Guyanese will once again emerge the perennial losers until the next election cycle.
A casual perusal of the delivery of past campaign promises resulting in the ‘Guyanese Dream’, whether it was the PPP’s New Guyana Man or the PNC’s Small Man is the Real Man or the Coalition’s Good Life, will show that neither the PPP nor the PNC has made that dream possible for Guyanese for over half a century.
Guyanese politicians elected to office and those appointed to hierarchical public service positions appeared to always come out better than when they went in to office, making the ‘Guyanese Dream’ a reality for a select few.
The most recent visible example of this is Bharrat Jagdeo, whose rags to riches story is a national embarrassment, because his rise to wealth came during his 12-year presidency on an income incapable of producing such wealth.
In fact, when the Coalition defeated the PPP in 2015 by a razor thin margin of votes (4,500+), it was partly a sharp rebuke of the Bharrat Jagdeo-led PPP for its criminally corrupt excesses, which saw the PPP elite and associates enriching themselves off the finances, assets and resources of government amidst a burgeoning drugs-fueled informal economy.
Stabroek News and Kaieteur News chronicled myriad of these excesses and they paid a harsh price initiated by the Jagdeo regime.
That is why it boggles the mind that the same Stabroek News and Kaieteur News, almost conveniently and flippantly, ignored those incidents and rallied in the last 18 months to fight for the restoration of a democracy that could see the same Jagdeo wielding political power over a President Irfaan Ali in government.
Editor, we went down the democratic restoration route with the 1992 elections, after 24 years of PNC rigged elections, only to see that democracy, under the guise of free and fair elections, does not always result in delivering on promises to voters. This is why I don’t believe a resurgent Jagdeo-led PPP will necessarily represent a people-focused change; even if Irfaan Ali becomes President.
Moreover, if the unrepentant PPP is returned to office, it will have David Arthur Granger to thank for this easy opportunity. The Granger-Nagamootoo administration inherited a criminally corrupt government system from the PPP, so it had its work cut out cleaning up and rebuilding public confidence in and support for government.
It also had its work cut out showing Guyanese, whether its own supporters or those who did not vote for it, that the coalition concept meant it was an inclusive government that would invite Guyanese to help shape policy and implement reform and development programmes. Instead, the administration governed as though it had a super parliamentary majority reflective of a mandate. In short, the Coalition failed to live up to the concept of its name.
Many local analysts and commentators will have a field day talking and writing on the collapse of the Granger-Nagamootoo administration, but the most potent example of where it started was the disentanglement of the APNU+AFC accord. The AFC was the weaker and smaller party representative of a symbolic door into the PPP support base, but that door quickly became a wall.
Not only did Granger’s lack of political tact failed to build up the AFC to draw support from the PPP base; he watched as the AFC became weakened. Moses Nagamootoo, whose face was pictured next to Granger to draw voter support in 2015, was also supposed to be the face representative of the Indian Guyanese community, yet Nagamootoo became relegated to virtual obscurity. The AFC also did not help itself in ways that should define its own strength and purpose as a coalition partner.
The lone bright moment in which Granger appeared to show strong leadership was his highly praised revocation of Joe Harmon’s appointment of Brian Tiwarie as Business Advisor to government. After that, however, Granger receded into the political shadows as Harmon appeared to emerge as the de facto President, even as top officials committed a series of unforced errors.
So palpably disturbing was the Coali-tion’s performance that the December 2018 Local Government Elections results were used by Jagdeo as the catalyst to push his no confidence vote against the Coalition. Paradoxically, when Granger was Opposition Leader, he strenuously fought the PPP for restoration of LGEs, yet it was an LGE that did him in.
Granger was never a known historical political quantity in PNC circles, so I do not know who recommended that he should take over the leadership of the PNC after Robert Corbin decided to step down, but Granger simply failed to deliver for the PNC and the people of Guyana. Big time.
His most stunning failure since taking office was in not holding Jagdeo and his former government accountable for massive criminally corrupt incidents and the unsolved murders of scores of Guyanese, reported widely by local and regional media.
That single failure allowed Jagdeo to use his political comeback from retirement to attempt the ouster of the Coalition from power, and which could push the PNC into virtual extinction. That’s right: if the PPP gets back into power shortly, it will take a Herculean effort to resurrect the PNC to some semblance of political relevancy and potency.
As I noted at the top of this letter, I don’t know who will emerge as winner of the vote recount declaration, but I am not confident that such a win will automatically translate into a win for all Guyanese.
Meanwhile, Guyanese have to take some responsibility for their ongoing socioeconomic predicament at the hands of the PPP and PNC, because they keep voting along racial lines with nothing tangible to show except a sense of false pride that the people who look like them are in power.
Guyanese expected better from Jagdeo in 1999 and subsequent elections, but he failed. Guyanese expected better from Ramotar in 2011, but he failed. Guyanese expected better from Granger in 2015, but he failed. Aren’t Guyanese destined to deal with a failure again when the elections recount is declared, regardless of who wins?
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
