Election conspiracy is in the air

Dec 28, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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In my column yesterday, I cited the opinion of President Jagdeo on the need for all Guyanese stakeholders to participate in the preservation of the sugar industry. His words came against his admission that 2009 is going to be an onerous and Sisyphean year for the sugar industry.
GuySuCo may be entering a long period of decline. No ingenious tinkering can save the Demerara sugar estates. Their days have long past. While Mr. Jagdeo was on his stakeholder consensus regime, the Government has re-tabled the Trade Union Recognition Bill to decapitate the Trade Union Council.
Here is a Government whose attitude to political discourse is a combination of deception and devastation. On the one hand, it desires political unity and in the same breath, it conspires to defeat stakeholders that it cannot control.
The Government is stupid to think that it can appeal to crucial actors in the Guyanese society to achieve consensus on the Government’s agenda, while it contemplates moves to effectively remove the presence of groups that stand in its way of complete control over the Guyanese society. This was the fundamental flaw in President Jagdeo’s appeal for national unity on his refusal to sign the EPA
I wrote weeks before his Convention Centre “consultations” on the EPA last September that he will not get support from the wider society for his EPA battle because stakeholders have requests that President Jagdeo shows no respect for. In turn, they will turn their backs on him.
As it turned out, the EPA dialogue with the major actors was an ignominious failure. The GHRA, Red Thread, Guyana Action Party, Red Thread, Guyana Consumers Affairs, ACDA, WPA, PNC, AFC, TUC, UG academics, the Guyana Press Association, the Guyana Council of Churches among others offered no support at the Convention Centre.
Sensing embarrassment, Mr. Jagdeo’s partnership with the Guyanese stakeholders lasted a mere two hours after the main presentations had ended. Only Professor Clive Thomas, wrote that what he saw at the event made the consultations far-reaching, comprehensive and all-embracing.
In fact, the fiasco at the Convention Centre created a rift between two PNC leaders, Winston Murray and Aubrey Norton. While Murray replied to me to say the PNC endorsed the President’s EPA stance, Aubrey Norton, at a PNC press conference took an acerbic swipe at Murray without mentioning his name. Norton made it clear that the PNC thinks the EPA should be signed.
Why this rush to defeat the TUC? Three reasons may be offered. One is to replace the TUC with FITUG so that GAWU becomes the sole bargaining agent of the collectivity of the working people because GAWU is the main plank of FITUG. Secondly, this would tie in with the desire to save GAWU because its image is at its lowest ebb since it was born.
It is doubtful that given what the future holds for the sugar industry, GAWU could remain the respected bastion of the sugar workers. In replacing the TUC with FITUG (call that GAWU), the Government will embark on a dangerous level of hypocrisy. While it shouts down the TUC as an unrepresentative body, this is exactly the status FITUG (call that GAWU) will acquire in two years’ time.
As I have written so often, Burnham’s style of dictatorship reigns in Guyana. It never went away.
The third explanation contains dangerous elements. After 2009 finishes, it is election time. Forget 2011. As that year begins, it will find the election campaign in overdrive. The real election battle starts in 2010. The preparations for the general elections will commence next year. This will be the war that the PPP will fear terribly. It will be at its most vulnerable. All the cards are stacked against it. There is no credible leader for the PPP to put forward. The economic fall-out from the depressed sugar industry will bite severely. Mr. Corbin as the whipping boy will not be there. Immigration will devastate the PPP’s expected numbers.
So as early as the end of 2008, the traditional conspiracy has been resorted to – provoke confrontation with the PNC, the TUC and other anti-PPP groups in the hope that it will scare PPP supporters. Mr. Jagdeo told Berbicians just before the 2006 poll that if the opposition wins, the people who stole the AK-47s will be given them freely.
President Jagdeo has said that the security forces have a tape that reveals opposition elements in league with violent gunmen in Buxton. The stage is being set for Freedom House to go to the East Indian population and say to them; “See what will happen to you if you do not vote us back in.” What a tragic country!

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