It must not be business as usual!

Dec 18, 2011 AFC Column, Features / Columnists

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By Khemraj Ramjattan

The 2011 Election results have propelled the need for the emergence of a new dispensation in the conduct of our national affairs. The voters have indicated to all that cuss-down politics will not create winners. This surely must be a lesson that the PPP must learn.
The voters also made it clear that though they still have not liberated themselves from race-based politics, a number of them have the courage and good sense to start the march away from that stultifying existence. This is such an important signal to the AFC.
I am so happy that the Party stuck to its original principles of not coalescing with either the PPP or with the PNC (later APNU). I am happy to have led that lobby. This distinctly separate identity had an effect on the electorate. It offered a choice to the disaffected PPPites and PNCites.
The absence of that choice would have realized an abstentionist politics. In other words, the thousands who came the AFC’s way, in my opinion, would have stayed home like the more than a quarter of the registered electors, had there been a merger with one of the two old parties.
At the Special Conference of the AFC in October 2010, I had urged the following:
“….working with those we campaigned against will be a feasible project. Just like Obama did with Hillary Clinton, post electoral alliances will make sense and be far more practicable. A third party going it in a three-way race will help demand a unity which may come post-elections. It is something I can live with because the AFC’s identity and strength will be known at that point
Moreover, the racial voting patterns of the two ethnicities for the two old parties will be put to the test. Guyana’s true liberation as a nation depends on voters in the two camps seriously being put to the challenge….when will they stop voting race and commence the journey of voting reason? I think that journey will continue in 2011, it having started in 2006 only with a distinctly separate AFC. This to my mind is foresight and confidence which will force unity and a common platform of good governance.”
But this new dispensation which has been forced as a consequence of the minority Government, has it really started off on a sound footing? I am not too sure that I will acclaim affirmatively as yet. So much could have been done, other than what has happened, to signal that we are on a new path and a new trajectory, to indicate that a profound departure has been made from that obscene Sultanism championed by Jagdeo.
Yes, I will be justifiably confronted with: “But it is too early times. Give Ramotar some space.” I surely will do! And hope and expect.
But there are happenings since the formation of the new Government that compel a deduction that things will be more of the same, business as usual, and control-freakism will continue to reign, or at least exist in great measure. It is a bad omen.
Firstly, why did the new President, knowing he will lead a minority Government, not extend an arm in gracious embrace with the majority Opposition in some form of Unity Government?
Secondly, why the almost wholesale re-appointment of his new Cabinet? Did he not have new faces of calibre to at least give the impression that changes will later come?
And just look at the new faces! To see Bishop Juan Edghill as Junior Finance Minister was as unexpected as having Jesus voting for the PPP. To see Dr. Gopaul as Minister of Labour when only last year his GuySuCo Board wanted to de-recognise GAWU was just as shocking. And Ali Baksh? Has not the happenings with this former Regional Chairman in Region 2 been brought to the attention of the President? And then again why overbloat the Administration with all these Ministries including the new one for oil and gold going to Robert Persaud? I am not enamoured by all this!
Thirdly, the refusal to conduct an investigation through a Commission of Inquiry into the Dec 6th rubber-bullet shooting incident in Hadfield Street justifies a belief in me that says: “Same old … Same old”.
Fourthly, why has there not been a demand for the Police Commissioner’s resignation forthwith by either the Home Affairs Minister or the President? The Commissioner may or may not have committed rape. But surely such conduct, as described in detail by the accuser, warrant dismissal if he does not resign. Come on!
What kind of responsible Government is this? A man went into the Queen’s bedroom some decades ago, and for this embarrassment, the Home Secretary resigned! Here, the Police shoot at retreating protestors, and their Commissioner finds himself in a rotten, scandalous activity and nothing in accordance with the norms of democracy has happened.
There are a number of other developments which strike me that the war ain’t over, and that this new Administration would want it just like it used to be. It is incumbent then that the AFC be firm and strong in this post-election period to press hard for changes. We do not want a new Sultan!

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