The PNC is trapped

Oct 17, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Life has its unforeseen forces. There are times they work in favour of human progress and freedom. Below, we will come to the joke life has just played on the PNC. There are important governments in the world that have some leverage to rearrange the shape of power in Georgetown.
The configuration of opposition politics is the main stumbling block. The role of extra-judicial forces, suspected flirtation with communist ideas, suspected anti-American sentiments, the presence of untouchable persons who deal in a deadly trade, runaway corruption and the likelihood of social collapse are factors that CARICOM and the ABC (America, Britain and Canada) countries constantly reflect on when analyzing political developments in this land.
We have some manifestations of this concern like the visa problems that Ronald Gajraj, Clement Rohee and the Acting Commissioner of Police encountered with the US Embassy. Any decision by CARICOM and the West to put pressure on the PPP Government will rest on how they perceive the main opposition party, the PNC.
My thinking on this is that it is not a favourable opinion. It was a huge strategic mistake when Mr. Corbin succeeded Desmond Hoyte. Many things did not work in Mr. Corbin’s favour but yet the party decided to go with him.
It is true that Mr. Corbin’s formative years as PNC leader were not wild and unpatriotic. He didn’t come across as someone who was insensitive to a majority of Guyanese who wanted a respite from the permanency of warfare
The PPP used Corbin’s relaxation of “mo fyaah/slow fyaah” to increase the dictatorial tempo. When Corbin caught himself, he couldn’t resurrect Macbeth’s witches because he had alienated key players inside the PNC and the non-PNC opposition. Attempts at bringing the witches to life occurred during the four-month presidential ban on Channel 6 but the PNC was without its valuable organizers because Mr. Corbin had banished them to the disciplinary table.
From the time he became leader up to this moment, Mr. Corbin has not shown that he understands how to confront an authoritarian government. The lessons are there but he refuses to learn them.
When Mr. Corbin was part of a dictatorial administration, the opposition to his government was all-embracing. Even though the PPP was the more resourceful of the opposition parties, it was prepared to let the WPA take the protagonist role in the fight against the PNC. It was a masterstroke on the part of the PPP.
The present PNC leadership is bereft of strategic thinking. This explains why foreign governments do not see it as an alternative to the PPP. Once the PNC maintains its present shape, there is no way the international community is going to put a brake on the PPP’s excesses.
Mr. Jagdeo has slightly over two years left and judging from the nine years he has been at the helm, there is hardly a possibility of a democratic redemption. In the absence of a strong united anti-dictatorship alliance, this country is going to continue to suffer until the 2011 poll.
The present PNC leadership does not want an all-opposition alliance. It continues to make deals with the PPP and it continues to be outdone by Freedom House and by Mr. Jagdeo in particular. The PNC has nothing to show its communities at a time when never in the history of this land, its core constituencies have been so psychologically uncertain about their future.
Even Professor Clem Seecharran commented on the mental state of the PNC’s supporters at this time in Guyana. This week, the people of Guyana saw something from the PNC that should determine whether the party and the wider community of its supporters should remain faithful to its current leadership.
The PNC wrote the AFC to ask for a stakeholders’ meeting because it claimed that the PPP has abandoned the Task Force on Local Government Reform. The AFC responded with a press release accusing the PNC of locking the AFC out of the Task Force when it was born, and being happy to have only the PPP and PNC as the two main actors.
The AFC went so far as to say that both the PNC and PPP had chosen the same person to represent both of them. Now life has played a huge trick on the PNC. President Jagdeo two days ago ordered the Task Force to continue. The PNC is trapped. Since it wanted the AFC’s help in stopping the dissolution of the Task Force, it has a moral obligation to bring in the non-PNC parliamentary opposition on the Task Force. It has to do that. Nothing else will be acceptable. If the PNC doesn’t, the Guyanese people break with it once and for all.

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