Grassroots View II

Aug 15, 2010 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

---

My Aunt dropped in for a visit from NY after a decade’s absence. She’d originally migrated over thirty years ago. She wanted to participate in the activities marking the 100th Anniversary of the Arya Samaj, but also wanted to check out the country. As the dutiful nephew, I squired her around – from Charity to Crabwood Creek – during the last two weeks. Not so surprisingly I ran into (and looked up) quite a few faces from the days of the hustings. Also not surprisingly, the conversations inevitably segued into politics.
Now that it was known that I was not involved in active politics, it was evidently easier for even PPP supporters to voice their concerns about political developments. Claims about corruption were openly bandied about – whether it was in Berbice or Essequibo. Tales of favoured smugglers in the former and inflated costs of drying floors for paddy in the latter, and of substandard infrastructural works everywhere, for instance, were emblematic of the new rueful posture. What was interesting however, was the cry that “the party has to do something about the corruption”. I did not detect any widespread abandonment of the PPP by its traditional base. At the very worse there might be a continuation of the trend of not showing up at the polls.
On the Essequibo Coast, the old ROAR organiser had been picked up by the AFC and several of the foot soldiers had followed suit. Back in 2005 when the AFC was gestating during the first round of “Third Force” politics, many of us had encouraged their formation. The goodwill had obviously survived. It would appear that once the Rubicon of opposing the PPP had been crossed, alternative political vehicles on that side of the river are easier to choose. The PNC, however, had manifestly not overcome the negativities that it had accumulated in its chequered past.
Apart from the fact that the party had not been noticeably organisationally active since the last general elections, even among its supporters it was felt that Robert Corbin was an albatross that had to be jettisoned. He received very little credit for the restraint of late he had displayed in rebuffing confrontational politics. Some openly rejected the approach as indicative of a “sell-out”; others sneered it was dictated by a “burn out” on the ground. No one challenged the contention that the PNC had to enter the next election as a member of a wider coalition: Corbin, it was flatly asserted, was an impediment to such a coalition. Winston Murray’s name came up often as the preferred replacement.
The buzz about the AFC was palpable – in both the Essequibo Coast and in Berbice. While this may be due to the fact that I was interacting with mostly ROAR supporters, I believe that the phenomenon is wider than that. Many are dissatisfied with the “old” politics: the AFC, with its credible showing at the last elections, is receiving a predictable alternative look. The recent brouhaha about their Presidential candidate in the upcoming elections, however, has not done them any good.
The average Guyanese is still very savvy about his political history. To quite a few of them the episode was reminiscent of “what happened between Jagan and Burnham”. The announcement from the executive deliberations has not quelled the latent fears, which, after all, are an integral part of the political mythology of every Guyanese. That the ratification of the original promise to rotate the presidential candidate is still subject to the decision of a new conclave scheduled for later this year, was the source of a not inconsiderable amount of cynicism.
The second concern about the AFC was that they have not done enough work at the grassroots: the sentiment that the leadership is still too bound to Georgetown was widespread. This view was particularly strong among the activists with whom I interacted. They reminisced ruefully about the amount of continuous, intense work they had to do in 2001 to wrest away just one seat from the Indian constituency. Groundings at 4-5 am on the cane-workers “order lines” and huddles in the rice fields had earned some trust. But how quickly that had withered with the fall-off occasioned by the depletion of the leadership corps of ROAR!
The AFC, it was assessed, had just not done enough work amongst the ordinary people to harvest the discontent that had grown in the Indian ranks. The expected onslaught of political activity in the coming year, it was gainsaid, would not be enough to induce the traditional PPP voter to actually place his/her “X” elsewhere. Khemraj Ramjattan’s assessment that an AFC coalition with the PNC – with or without Corbin – was not favoured by Indian voters is on the ball. Close associates from the ROAR days told me to my face that they rejected my call for the widest possible opposition coalition – even if premised on a commitment for a post-election government of national unity that included the PPP – once the PNC is included.
The gamble the AFC is taking – and it is a gamble – is whether they will not “lose corn and husk” in 2011. In 2005, the AFC chose to go the route that the PPP and PNC had already traversed in attempting to form a “multi-racial” party through the selection of leaders drawn from the major ethnic sections. Their innovation, copied from the WPA, was to rotate the selection of the Presidential candidate: this has already created its predictable frissons. Pointing out in 2006 that the AFC votes had come mainly from the African section due to the perceived inadequacies of the PNC and to Rafael Trotman’s leadership – much as Paul Tenassee’s DLM was reported to have drawn “PPP” votes in 1985 – I predicted that the test would come in 2011 under their leadership of Khemraj Ramjattan.
The moment has almost arrived. I still believe their best bet is to be part of the widest possible coalition. Leaders are supposed to lead.

---

---