APNU IS MAKING EXCUSES

Aug 19, 2011 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) should not be blaming the government for its own failures. It should accept that the problems that it now faces are of its own creation.
It should accept that responsibility, admit to its mistakes and see what it can do to reverse its fortunes. Blaming the government for its own problems makes it seem like if it is already conceding defeat.
APNU was supposed to correct the problems that emerged five years ago with The Big Tent. The experience of that period should have instructed the PNCR and the WPA that unless they got the AFC on board, they would have great difficulty building a credible coalition.
APNU thought it had found a way around the shortcomings of the failure of The Big Tent. The solution was actually proposed by the WPA, the intellectual authors behind APNU. The WPA came up with a new concept. It sought an open partnership, meaning that anyone could join.
Long before APNU was conceived, the WPA was calling for a partnership that went beyond political parties, and instead, involved social organizations and groups. The WPA itself had never tested that concept, even though it too had been part of other partnerships in the past.
The PNCR bought this hook, line and sinker, believing that it would work. But this is Guyana, and even the most casual observer would indicate that the new leaders of APNU could not come from civil society.
The WPA itself came into the partnership alone. Other than its own leaders, the WPA did not bring a single person of national standing or any organization to the partnership. And it must ask itself why.
There are many social organizations which have leaders with strong ties to the WPA. These organizations have stayed out of APNU and are not likely to get involved, even in the months ahead, as thing get more desperate.
And they have good reason. A great many of them receive international funding and any partisan alliance is going to hurt their relationship with their international financiers. Foreign donors want the NGOs they support to be free of any taint of partisan political involvement.
APNU therefore should not be blaming the environment of fear for the failures of its partnership. It is not fear, it is practical politics.
Fear has not prevented a number of persons from joining up with the Alliance for Change. Fear is the issue. The issue is a concept that was rushed and not tested.
Before adopting this concept of an open partnership, the WPA should have tested it on the ground and should have not gone ahead with an open partnership, unless there were commitments from persons to come on board.
The PNCR and the WPA are supposed to be experienced enough to know that when you launch a new partnership, its success is often judged by its initial impact. The launch of APNU was relatively a damp squib. APNU has not made waves, it is not going to make waves, and for all intents and purposes it is effectively the PNCR.
It has not gotten off to a flying start, and it is therefore not likely to have a great many groups join in the future. APNU has not excited the population and therefore it has not been able to make the sort of impact that its formulators may have been expecting.
APNU cannot be serious when it calls for trade unions to join the partnership. The PNCR, the senior member of the partnership, once had close ties to a trade union. But it lost that control. Why then should it expect that existing trade unions are going to risk coming on board the partnership?
How can APNU expect that new partners will come on board when even before it widened its net, it agreed on a presidential candidate? Suppose it finds a candidate now that can give the PPP a run for its money. Suppose it finds a consensus candidate. What will it do?
It cannot do anything, because even before the partnership was widened, the PNCR imposed its will, knowing that it was going to bring the most seats to the coalition and therefore demanding the presidential candidate. You do not build broad coalitions by doing these things.
APNU has to accept that it made mistakes, huge mistakes. It would have been better if it had delayed its launch so as to ensure that it had a broad coalition.
It takes work to build such coalitions, not excuses. APNU is making excuses.
One can only hope that when it is humiliated at the polls that APNU does not try to blame someone else for its performance, but should be prepared to face its defeat and accept responsibility for its failures.

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APNU IS MAKING EXCUSES

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