OLD DOGS AND NEW TRICKS

Feb 19, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The man in the street was making a point to his friend. He said, “One Babu gone; another Babu tek over. But like the new Babu sleeping and the old one running things.”
That is unfortunately how many ordinary folks have so far summed up the transition from the Bharrat Jagdeo presidency to that of Donald Ramotar. The people are seeing no difference.
They are seeing too many of the same old faces and too much of the same ways of doing things.
And for the most part the people are right. The government is simply stuck in its old ways and it is time that the new President begins to cut his own cloth so as to distinguish himself from his predecessor.
Familiarly referred to as Uncle Donald because of his humble and homely personality, the new President seems very much cautious and timid in these first few months of his presidency. But that “nice-boy style” is never going to be good enough and is going to run his presidency into problems.
Already there are problems with the combined parliamentary opposition now known as the alliance, since the Alliance for Change is now indistinguishable from APNU, and the two are so cozy it is hard to know who is APNU and who is AFC.
The government seems very much obsessed with this marraige between the two main opposition parties, so much so that it seems to have forgotten that there is a new dispensation in the National Assembly.
But while the government no longer holds the majority in parliament, it continues to operate along the same lines as the Jagdeo administration did, and with most of the same old faces from the regime of the former president.
In many ways, the new government was hogtied to the past government. The PPP/C went into the elections on the basis of its track record of achievements. And so it was not unusual that its slate was dominated by persons of the old regime.
When the new president came in he had to choose his cabinet primarily from the list of persons on his party’s slate and since this slate was dominated by elements of the old government, he had little maneuverability. But he did make some changes and has brought the government closer to the party.
So there were changes. But the changes ended with the banishing of some of the old ministers and the bringing in of a few new faces from the party. This is where it begun and this is where it has ended.
Despite this, the government is still by and large dominated by the old faces that were loyal to President Jagdeo, and many of whom are incorrigible. These persons are not doing the President any favour and he too seems to be moving very timidly in bringing in fresh faces.
This is not in keeping with what is required under a system in which one party has executive power but no majority over the legislature.
If the PPP/C is going to adapt to this new dispensation, if it is going to avoid going to snap elections, it has to realize that change has to be deep and pervasive. But this is not happening.
The PPP/C administration, in short, does not get it. It does not like the way the opposition is behaving. But that should never have surprised the PPP/C. It should expect nothing better from the opposition.
In fact it should expect nothing at all from the opposition because there is very little that the opposition can offer?
The PPPC needs to understand this and the President needs to wake up to the fact that it is no longer what is done that matters but how things are done. All the opposition wants is for things to be done differently, because they have nothing to offer that is different from what the government is promoting, and so all they are saying is let us do things differently, come to us instead of us having to embarrass and humiliate you in parliament.
You can do the same things that have been done before but it has to be done differently, with a different attitude and a different make-up. That surely cannot be asking too much.
But it is not easy also to do things differently when you have the same old faces around who in the past were not keen on giving the opposition any quarter.
The president also has to be realistic and understand that the same old faces cannot be expected to do things differently.
There was the constructive engagement process that was initiated when Mr. Robert Corbin was leader of the opposition. That went nowhere. Before that there was the dialogue process with Mr. Hoyte that also dragged on with complaints about poor implementation.
How is this new tripartite process going to work when the same old faces in which the opposition had long lost confidence are the main movers of this new process on the government side?
The government must obviously have its trusted and loyal comrades as part of any process but does this mean that the same old faces have to be recycled?
How is the new president going to build confidence with the opposition when they have a memory about dealing with these persons and that memory is not all that pleasant?
And it gets worse, because neither the opposition nor the people are seeing any real change in the way things are being done. The government still controls the executive, but one has to ask what has changed since November 28? What is different?
Even when it comes to relating to the media, the government has stuck with the same old personnel, prompting one man in the street to ask pointedly, “You mean we have to see that man’s face for five more years?”
It is not about competence at all. There is no doubt that the old guard is very competent but they are competent in the old ways of doing things and quite honestly those old ways need to be set aside.
You cannot bring a financial paper to the parliament and hope to have it passed without negotiations. Instead of raging about the opposition trying to frustrate the work of the government and stymie its development plans, the government has to say ‘okay, let us negotiate this thing’.
The old way of fuming when you do not get your way belongs to the old regime. It has to change and until the president understands that it may be asking too much to ask the old guard to do things differently, the longer he will be mired in the old ways of doing things.
The president may be hoping that he can change things with the same old faces, but he will soon realize- if he has not already- that not all dogs can be taught new tricks.

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