The runner stumbles: The PNC in 2008

Sep 11, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I have a healthy regard for opposition politician, Winston Murray. Over the years I have known Mr. Murray, I would say he is a positive presence on the political landscape of this country.

I may be accused by Mr. Murray of being impertinent in the points I will raise below because he can say who am I to tell him about Guyanese politics, after all, he has long experience as a politician.

In his reply to one of my columns about the PNC’s participation in the EPA consultations pioneered by President Jagdeo (SN, Sep10) he justifies the PNC’s contribution to the EPA confabulation held for one day last Friday.

In that response, Mr. Murray, unfortunately, and much to my frustration, ignored some of the priceless fundamentals of politics. Mr. Murray wrote that President Jagdeo sent a letter to the PNC seeking their support about the risk of the EPA to Caricom.

Mr. Murray cannot be that myopic to embrace the contents of that letter when the entire territory of Guyana knows that President Jagdeo, before his letter to the PNC, had denounced the EPA as not being in Guyana’s interest and he exclaimed that he would not sign it.

Was Mr. Murray swayed by the absence of Guyana in the wording of Mr. Jagdeo’s letter and the name Caricom?

Mr. Murray should ask himself why the President didn’t include the word Guyana in his invitation
Mr. Murray ought to know that when President Jagdeo repudiated the EPA in its present form, he was saying one thing, absolutely one thing, and one thing only – Guyana will suffer very badly if we agree to the EPA.

What then should have been the PNC’s attitude to Mr. Jagdeo’s overture to have stakeholders’ consensus on the reworking of the EPA?

I come now to one of the fundamentals of politics. The PNC’s pressing obligation was to say to Mr. Jagdeo; “But Sir, not only the EPA is deleterious to the future of Guyana but many other important policies and outputs that you as President have ignored.

Can we then take a holistic approach to stakeholders’ participation in the preservation of Guyana’s future by collapsing the EPA and other exigencies?”

I call this a basic value in political bargaining because the PNC has a deep obligation to its supporters to ask them what the institutions are that they think are inimical to Guyana’s social wholesomeness.

Surely, it could not have been the EPA alone. A political party cannot enter the arena of political discourse without the agenda being fixed by its constituents.

The alternative to that is authoritarian structure. Is Mr. Murray telling us that the PNC has an autocratic biology?

Mr. Murray has been around a long time to know how Cheddi Jagan shaped his agenda. It was done by Dr. Jagan only.

While Dr. Jagan was shouting eulogies to Lenin, Stalin and the Soviet Union, his constituents didn’t care a damn about communism. Is this the way the PNC is heading as 2008 draws to a close?

The PNC didn’t need a lecture on the concept of holism when the invitation came from the President. The PNC knew about politics and what underpins it when it boycotted Carifesta.

The PNC’s argument was extremely pertinent and simple: “We cannot join with you and celebrate Carifesta because Guyana is not a democracy and it will not be in our party’s interest to make believe that we are one people enjoying a united country.”

That very premise should have been used by the PNC when its Parliamentarians received their letters to attend the bonfire of the EPA at the Convention Centre last Friday.

The PNC had no room to manouevre in positing a connection between the EPA and other policies, because the facts have bound them to such a conceptual interrelationship.

Once the President had determined that the EPA as a process would hurt Guyana’s future, he played into the hands of all the major stakeholders who want to see two directions – one is a genuine approach to inclusive politics and secondly the abandonment of policies that are creating a crescendo of tensions that may result in consequences that no one in the world wants to see happen in Guyana.

The President was cornered and would have been hard pressed to defend many of the deteriorating situations, brought about by Mr. Jagdeo’s attitudinal architecture that are threatening the future of Guyana, just as the EPA.

So does Mr. Murray agree that the collapse of tertiary education will harm Guyana’s future as much as the EPA? Doesn’t he feel the same way about the politicization of the police force? Shall I go on with my list, Mr. Murray?

Latest News

The runner stumbles: The PNC in 2008

Related

Similar Articles

The Glenn Lall Show|| March, 31st, 2025

Follow on Tik Tok @Glennlall

THE BLUNT OF THE DAY

Sports

Saints and GTI dominate as YBG Georgetown Regional Conference...

Carty misses ton, Hamilton (80) sets up tense...

Annandale Sec’ dominates latest fixtures in...

GPF FC to tackle Slingerz tomorrow as GFF Elite...

Permaul’s Trading & Distribution joins...

All set for Rotary Club of NA Childhood Obesity...

Features/Columnists

A coalition of shared disgrace

The U.S. “Joining” the Commonwealth: an unreasonable expectation

Better contract management, info flows

Publisher’s Note

Weekend Cartoon

Bridge Watch

Demerara Harbour Bridge

> Berbice Bridge […]

The runner stumbles: The PNC in 2008

Share this:

Related

Similar Articles

The Glenn Lall Show|| March, 31st, 2025

Follow on Tik Tok @Glennlall

THE BLUNT OF THE DAY

Sports

Features/Columnists

Publisher’s Note

Weekend Cartoon

Bridge Watch

Demerara Harbour Bridge

> Berbice Bridge […]