Norwegian paradox: The role of an opposition party

Nov 18, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

---

There is a traditional misunderstanding in democratic countries of what the role of an opposition party should be. It is generally conceived that the parties that compete with the election winner should not oppose for the sake of opposing.
Countless times we have read where Governments have accused their parliamentary adversaries of refusing to cooperate with the ruling organization on matters of benefit to the nation. The story is not as simple as it appears.
Ruling parties and the parliamentary competitors fight for the same space – the electorate. What this means, then, is that all groups in the election arena have to justify their existence, if not, they are going home. Out of this dynamic come the processes of expectations and obligation.
The opposition supporters have expectation of their leaders. They want to see their politicians expose the weaknesses, opportunism, tricks and deceptions of those that rule the nation. In turn, opposition leaders have to fulfill their obligations to their supporters. Opposition entities cannot do what they want because they have to take into consideration the feelings of their constituencies.
In Guyana today, the opposition forces have contributed largely to the apathy and resignation that we see among the population. They do nothing to engender optimism and hope in the nation. On the contrary, their performance invokes feelings of anger and disrespect.
Take the boycott of Parliament by both the PNC and AFC. This charade is making both parties look comical. One day in. One day out. And what is their explanation? We will go into Parliament on selected issues. Then they come out empty-handed, the ruling cabal laughs at them and these same people expect you to vote them in as the government in 2011. Their supporters want a principled position – if you are boycotting then boycott.
What have the PNC and the AFC been telling their supporters since the last election? There are volumes and volumes of materials from these two quarters that when read, lead the reader to think in evanescent ways that Guyana has a hardened, insensitive, violent ruling cabal that will not concede an economy that allows for economic justice and a political structure that will bring social justice.
The canvas adequately painted by the Opposition in parliament is that Guyana is a failed state where ruling cliques hobnob with drug traffickers, steal from the treasury and are engaged in the worst kind of moral turpitudes, involving sexual adventurers that not even European dictators in the 1930s would have tolerated in their governments.
With each passing day, their request for transparency and accountability get ignored with ridicule and contempt. Amidst this tragedy, they run to the altar of power, in a mistaken belief of nationalism, to offer succour to those that sadistically sideline them and rub their faces in the mud.
When a caricature of what a national consultation should be took place on the EPA last year at the Convention Centre, Winston Murray from the PNC and Clive Thomas of the WPA were there to lend support to Mr. Jagdeo’s advocacy of a boycott of the signing of the EPA with the European Union.
Murray since then (more than a year ago) cannot show the Guyanese people where the generous reciprocations of Mr. Jagdeo are.
Enter the Alliance For Change (AFC). It went ahead and endorsed the LCDS. It met with some Norwegian officials and accepted President Jagdeo’s LCDS; no doubt to show the Norwegians that it is a nationalist party not opposing for the sake of opposition. The AFC missed the point badly, so badly that it may suffer an ignominious defeat at the next election.
It is not the viability and workability of the LCDS that should have concerned the AFC but what it hopes to offer its supporters in exchange for accepting something President Jagdeo was desperate for them to embrace, so that he could have shown the Norwegians that he has national consensus for his so-called LCDS.
What happens to the expectations of the AFC supporters and where are the moral obligations by AFC leaders to those supporters? Briefly, the expectations are that these constituents would want to see the AFC benefit for a mature relationship with the presidency.
The AFC offers support for LCDS, the President, in turn accepts the draft document of the AFC on freedom of information. The AFC had a moral obligation to go to its voters and asked if they would like to see AFC’s endorsement of the LCDS. So the AFC gives to the ruling party and what do the elites give in return?  What kind of politics do you call this?

---

---