Sometimes competition brings out the worse

Jan 22, 2011 Editorial

The ease with which people make issues of certain things is amazing. There are some things that under normal conditions, would have been ignored. For example, road accidents would not have made the news unless they were sensational in that they claimed multiple lives.
Sometimes, those areas in which road accidents were unheard of would record one and become a talking point, even if no one died. The rarity of the event would have made it news.
Until recently, many in this country refused to even believe that child sex was a phenomenon. Indeed, it was the law that a girl of 13 could take a husband because that was the age of consent. It was so because people of East Indian ancestry married their daughters at an early age. That law is now changed and the age of consent is now 16.
Amazingly, what was a cultural issue did not evoke any protest. An entire culture that had come to accept that very young women should marry, remained silent as the state mandated otherwise. Perhaps that was so because people in this modern day society concluded that 13 was too young and wanted to see a change although they made no effort to evoke such a change.
Today, an adult engaging in sex acts with a 13-year-old is big news. The police and the other social organizations become involved.
Now there is another issue that is making the news and it has to do with the internal workings of the ruling People’s Progressive Party as well as the People’s National Congress Reform. For the first time in the history of those parties there is a public process to determine who would lead them into the upcoming elections.
The PCNR has a process to select its presidential candidate. There are five candidates and they all move in a pack to justify to the public they face and to the people in the party who are monitoring them who would lead the party come elections 2011.
Unlike the primaries in the United States, the nominees in the PNCR are not allowed to campaign openly because the party believes that someone may say something untoward and hurt the party. This is a remarkable development since the PNCR always maintained that the party was greater than any individual.
The ruling PPP also has its candidates—five of them— who are challenging to lead the party into the elections. This would not have happened in the past because there were no term limits for Presidents and national leaders. Further, the founders of the party were unchallenged within the party. Those were the days of the charismatic leaders.
In any corner of the world where there is competition for a title or a position, things sometimes get ugly. The race for the presidential candidacy of both parties fits this mould. While there is no confrontation between the candidates vying for the PNCR top spot, the same is not the case for the ruling party. Suddenly the various candidates are taking pot shots at the other. They are also questioning the method that would be used to select the candidate.
Last week, we learnt that there has been such a situation in the past, during the selection of the presidential candidate for the 1996 elections. But such was the process that the outside world was not even aware that the presidential candidate did not emerge without a challenge.
What then makes this different this time around? It must be the glamour that President Bharrat Jagdeo has brought to the job. Then again, it could be the financial inflows into the country that will allow for unprecedented expenditures.
Whatever the case, there is some acrimony because people are now challenging the manner of voting inside the Central Committee. The stated position is that there will be a vote by the show of hands but there are those who want a secret ballot. It would seem that there is duplicity in the ranks of the voters. Publicly, the arguments suggest, they would make one statement but privately they would harbour a different view or would take a different position.
There are allegations of promises by the candidates. One member of the Central Committee says that there is evidence; that people have so reported. But what is more shocking are the attacks that have spilled beyond the party, to people.
Claims of alcoholism and of other anti social acts have surfaced. Interestingly, all this is playing out in the media and on the social network. Sometimes, competition brings out the worse in the best of us.

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