THE PNC BELONGS WITHIN THE PPP

Jun 14, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The contemporary focus about power-sharing is all about the sharing of political power and not, as in the past, underpinned by an ideological programme. In effect, power-sharing has now become a vehicle for power-grabbing rather than a concerted attempted at forging a unity of the working class which was behind most of the other proposals made from the sixties right through to the holding of free and fair elections in 1992.
Once the PPP won those elections in 1992, it saw itself as constituting the basis for uniting the Guyanese people. Since then working class unity no longer informs the discourse on power- sharing. In fact, the whole concept of working class unity seems to have vanished from the agenda of the two main political parties, the PNCR and the PPP.
These parties are now committed to a mixed economy, one that recognizes the importance of the capitalist class and which sees this class as the engine of growth. The private sector as a result has now acquired a new- found cockiness and is so confident that its interests will be secured under both parties, that it can boldly announced that it is now the engine of growth in Guyana.
The private sector was not always this self-assured. In 1966, when the Forbes Burnham administration took over in an ill-fated alliance with the United Force, the capitalist class also felt that it was their moment and that they emerge as the vehicle for the development of Guyana.
Within four years they were fleeing with their money as the then PNC unleashed a campaign of nationalization, foreign exchange and import restrictions and high taxation that crippled their abilities and had them worried scurrying to shift their assets to safe havens.
Despite sending much of the capitalist class into exile, the PNC did not pursue with any seriousness or sincere attempts at working class unity. Whatever efforts were made at unity between the PNC and the PPP were more aimed at staving off imperialist pressures rather than building a nationalist working class movement such as what existed in the 1950’s under the original PPP with Cheddi Jagan as leader and Forbes Burnham as Chairperson.
Burnham however had big personal ambitions and was more interested in becoming Premier than in securing working class unity. He was quite prepared to split the working class in order to achieve his personal ambition of becoming Premier not just of Guyana but also of the Caribbean.
He thus split the PPP into two factions, the Burnhamite PPP and the Jaganite PPP. The Burnhamite PPP eventually became the PNC. Burnham lost two consecutive elections, under the constituency system, to the PPP headed by Jagan. In 1964, the PPP beat the PNC again under a new system of proportional representation but Burnham refused to join forces with Jagan to form a working class government that would have taken a united Guyana into independence and instead hooked up with the capitalist class to form a coalition government and oust the PPP from office.
Both leaders however never forgot that they were part of the same party and Jagan always harboured hopes that one day Burnham and his PNC would return home to the PPP. He very much wanted that because he felt this was the only way that genuine working class unity could be achieved.
It never did, even though there are some who contend that the two parties were near to an agreement just about the time when Burnham died. The truth, however, is that nothing concrete was ever cemented and therefore there was nothing to take the process forward after Burnham died and Hoyte rose to power.
Since then, working class unity has been placed on the backburner. Worse yet, the working class suffered under Hoyte as it never did before.
When the PPP came to power in 1992, it abandoned any pretence of working class unity and this has continued onto this day.
After the last elections in 2006, however, there was a significant development under Donald Ramotar, the General Secretary of the PPP. An agreement was forged between the PPP and the PNC to shut the AFC out of the chairmanship of the regions. The two parties combined to make this happen but the PPP in the process, accused the PNC of going back on the agreement and using it to further its own position in two regions.
While both parties have working class origins, there is little to suggest that they are keen on forging a genuine working class movement across party lines.
Jagan always wanted Burnham back within the PPP. . He tried for that. All his proposals about power sharing were about forging working class unity so as to build socialism. Once socialism was off the cards, he had no need for working class unity.
Socialism is now permanently off the cards, for both the PPP and the PNC and therefore the prospects of any power sharing based on working class unity is off the table.
The PNC is not interested in uniting the working class, and the PPP is now deeply intertwined with the capitalist class in Guyana. As such all the talk about power sharing is now more about the distribution of political power between parties that are interested in sitting in the seat of power.
So how about a new proposal about power sharing aimed at increasing wages of workers, reducing the prohibitive cost of living, tax reform aimed at putting more disposable income in the hands of the poor and linking tax breaks to the rich to re-investment of profits, halting the distribution of state lands to the rich for use in housing development?
How about instead of selling off government shares in the telephone company to the rich, the shares are sold to small workers? How about allowing the small man who has his two cents in the bank being allowed to invest in the hotel that is to be branded by the Marriott?
How in other words about both the PNCR and the PPP making proposals for working class benefits and through this, forge a unity of the working class? Any takers? I guess not.

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