THE MOMENT OF RECKONING

Feb 20, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

What happened in parliament last week has been wrongly construed as political brinksmanship. That is far from the truth; those were no political games that were played out.
What we saw in parliament last Thursday was vampire politics. What we saw there was bite for control and brutal use of APNU’s position of power that it holds in parliament. Those were no games. The opposition was sending one message and one message alone; we have power and we will use it to our advantage.
The PPP had better start becoming serious with this combined opposition.
APNU is in cahoots with the AFC and together they are going to strangle the political life out of the PPP government.
APNU is not bothered if the PPP decides to go back to the polls. That is what some of the leaders in APNU want because they know that five years from now, the question of their age will emerge and this, therefore, is their last stand.
In the final analysis, the PNCR is not going to be ever comfortable unless it gets it hands once again on executive power in this country. This is the ultimate aim of the PNCR so it is not going to be contented with simply being the power in the National Assembly. There is no glory is coming in second.
But it should be of concern to APNU, if it is to survive as a movement, to address the fundamental question regardless of what power it is now able to exercise in the National Assembly.
To obtain executive power, APNU has to address how is it going to win a free and fair election in Guyana? The world is not going to ever allow for an extra-constitutional seizure of power in Guyana. Executive power therefore can only be legitimately had through free and fair elections. So how is either APNU or the PNCR hoping to get this executive power when it gave the elections of 2011 its best shot and failed?
There are some people who feel that APNU does have a chance if it does two things.
The first thing would be to link with the Alliance for Change. That seems now to be already a done deal.
The AFC sat in parliament last week and simply went along with APNU’s line. It did so hook line and sinker. So it seems inevitable now that APNU and the AFC will form a formal alliance if not soon, most definitely later.
But that is not going to guarantee the combined opposition a majority or the presidency in future elections. APNU knows that even with the AFC on board and as a formal part of its movement, it will have to undercut the PPP’s support base. And there are persons who feel that the man to do that is Rupert Roopnarine.
He was by far the most electrifying speaker on APNU’s platform. He brought their rallies to life and had the crowd hyped. There are many who also feel that he was the political mastermind behind the very concept of an open partnership and therefore should be the one to lead APNU into the next elections whenever it is called.
There is growing popularity for him within APNU and he is seen as someone who can make a difference to APNU’s fortunes especially at a time when the leadership of the PNCR is losing some of its old political stalwarts.
The question therefore is whether APNU is going to be willing to take that gamble and name Rupert Roopnarine as its presidential candidate for the next elections. APNU would have seen how the AFC ate into the PPP’s support base and there is no reason therefore to underestimate the impact of an APNU under Rupert Roopnarine.
The bottom line is that APNU could not muster the support that Desmond Hoyte obtained in the 1992 and 1997 elections. It could not and the PPP is going to recover what it lost last November.
The PPP knows exactly what they did wrong and also what wrong was done to them and they are not going to allow those things to happen again. The PPP will aim for that extra two or three percentage points. That is all they need. They do not need more than 20,000 more votes and they can easily muster this.
So the ball is in APNU’s court right now as to how it can eat into the PPP’s support base to get the extra votes it needs so that when it forms an alliance with the AFC, as now seems very likely, it can have enough votes to win the presidency.
An early election with a new leader as the head of APNU can provide headaches for the PPP and perhaps secure that executive power that APNU so desperately craves. To wait five years is to wait to find a new leader who may not be able then to deliver a victory or to retain that unqualified support it now enjoys from the AFC. This therefore is the moment of reckoning for APNU.

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