AN OPEN PARTNERSHIP OF UNEQUALS?

Jul 23, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The Working Peoples Alliance has to accept what is thrown at it in the partnership that it has formed with the PNCR and two other marginal political parties.
Its participation in APNU is the lifeline that it is desperately hanging on to. Unable to rebuild the political base that it had during the heyday of Walter Rodney, the party has found itself in alliance after alliance for its political survival.
It has not been much of a political existence. It has moved from one grouping to the next and faced with imminent political extinction, grabbed at the opportunity to band with its traditional nemesis which it has long accused of being responsible for the death of its co-founder Dr. Walter Rodney.
With the passage of time and more so, considering its rejection by the ruling PPP since 1992, such coalitions must be seen in their present context and not always through the lens of past experiences.
In fact, one of the livewires behind the decision to join APNU has indicated the uniqueness of this coalition, describing it as an open partnership, meaning that it is not circumscribed by any limiting ideology or criterion for partnership.
Thus any grouping including possibly pro-PPP entities are free to join since this partnership is not just about winning elections, it is also mainly about forging national unity.
The problems with open partnership are that they are susceptible to internal problems. Since there is no ideological cohesion, it means that an open partnership is a rather loose arrangement that can easily unravel.
At its official launch a few days ago, there were reports that the naming of the positions was jettisoned off the agenda at the last minute. This is one of the problems that the WPA is going to face in a lop-sided arrangement where it has a voice but no teeth to go with it.
The WPA may be perplexed that certain things were taken off without its knowledge off the agenda, that is, if reports in sections of the press are accurate. But since it is not a formidable force in the partnership, the WPA has to put its tail between its legs and accept the ignominy.
The WPA ought, however, to have predicted these sort of teething problems. When you enter into a partnership, whether open or closed, the rules of engagement and operation have to be made clear.
There has to be agreement as to how decisions will be made and what happens when something happens without the consent of the partners.
Since APNU is a small grouping there is absolutely no need for any committee of guidance involving all the partners.
There should be a decision- making body involving all partners. Thus, all partners should be involved in every decision and if there is no unanimous agreement, there must be some mechanism arriving at a decision outside of this mechanism.
If these details were hammered out, then the comment attributed to one member of APNU about something being taken off at the last minute off the agenda could have been avoided.
But what can the WPA do if the future it is sidelined? It cannot do anything because it is toothless in this coalition.
It is going into the elections with a major party against a track record of marginalization at the previous elections.
The WPA should also be worried about all this talk about Vice Presidents. This shows that the WPA may be out of the loop when it comes to the naming of the Prime Ministerial candidate and therefore some token positions are likely to be given to the party in any new government.
But here again the situation gets confusing because the PNCR has always insisted that the PPP would be part of any arrangement of power sharing and since the WPA has long been touting power sharing then its proposed national unity arrangement must make accommodation for the PPP, that is, if the APNU wins the elections.
So it means that the PPP may have to get the Prime Minister position in any new government or at the minimum a few vice presidents, unless of course the PNCR plans to lock the PPP out of its national unity government just as how when the WPA made its proposal in the seventies for a government of national unity, it envisaged no role for the PNC.
No partnership, open or closed, is going to be taken seriously where there is such inequality existing. One of the ways of bridging such a situation would be to allow a greater role in the decision making to the smaller parties.
Whether the PNCR is willing to allow WPA and the smaller parties such a role is left to be seen, but before this concept of an open partnership goes any further, it should at least clarify how agendas are set and how they are modified.
There can be no progress until this issue is settled.

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