Proportionality, dictatorship and Norman Bates politics

Mar 11, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Attorney Nigel Hughes has asked the question where was proportionality all the time now that the PPP Government has discovered the concept in relation to the committees of Parliament. Nigel wants to know why this proportionality was not seen before in the exercise of power by the PPP.
This columnist should be particularly concerned about this Christopher Columbus feeling that has now enveloped the PPP. There is no proportionality on the UG Council which is stacked with nine Government-appointed representatives of which eight belong to PPP district party groups and four are PPP Parliamentarians. Where was proportionality when these PPP Councilors met and chose not invite me to a Council meeting of which I am a statutory member? We all know what happened. Some were offered new contracts.
(Freddie Kissoon had his contract terminated. He had reached the age of retirement and was operating on a contract. He did not have his contract renewed).
There is a vexation inside the PPP that is longer and larger than all the combined oceans of the world. The PPP is refusing to accept opposition majority in the Parliamentary committees. It wants what it calls proportionality, meaning that the composition of the committees must be proportionate to the numerical presence of the three parties in the House.
Most Guyanese do not see Parliament in terms of three parties but ruling party and opposition. This is the way this columnist analytically conceives of the tenth Parliament – the combined opposition and the PPP.
As Nigel Hughes asked –where was this proportionality the past two decades? We can start with each national election since 1992. In the five elections that went by, the opposition has consistently beaten the PPP by a wide margin in the capital city. But proportionality was never called into existence when in all those years (20 to be exact), the voters of Georgetown have been treated to PPP-style dictatorship – the PPP has stultified the Georgetown City Council every day of every year since 1992.
A party that cannot win in Georgetown has never exercised power in the capital city proportionally.
Since 1992, the PPP in power has acted out its worst dictatorial instincts, particularly under Bharrat Jagdeo. The type of governance could plausibly attract the scholarly label of semi-fascism or even fascism. Mr. Jagdeo governed like a fiendish autocrat and his party behaves and still behaves like a totalitarian monster.
Where in the relentless pursuit of power, even under President Jagan after 1992, was there even the slightest recognition of the concept of proportionality?
With a collective psyche that tolerates no impingement on its framework and exercise of absolute power, the PPP is psychologically incapable of understanding and accepting that there is a brake on its power; that it will no longer be able to pass a budget that puts money in sectors it wants to; that its kings and queens can now be summoned to appear in Parliament to answer questions, refusing to do so can have legal consequences; that many of its semi-fascist laws will be thrown in the dustbin of the restaurants across the road from Parliament.
But you have to give the PPP credit. It is fighting back. It is going for the kill and it isn’t stabbing with a kitchen knife like Norman Bates. The PPP is firing large salvoes, some of which may destroy the political foundation of Guyana. It has gone to the judiciary to ask acting Chief Justice Ian Chang for a ruling on proportionality.
We may not be in uncharted waters as the Finance Minister put it when his financial papers were shot down, but rather in Jaws water, if Justice Chang rules in favour of proportionality. What happens then?
You certainly have to concede that the PPP is far more aggressive than its effete opposition adversaries. It is doing what both APNU and the AFC have not done and are not doing – fighting. The opposition was warned by some of us that the tripartite conference was a front for the PPP to stall. Now where are the tripartite talks?
The PPP didn’t get proportionality so the tripartite talks have disappeared. The inherent weakness of the talks is that its existence comes into being whenever the Government wants it. If the Government is busy, the confabulation is postponed. If the Government is vexed, the discussion is suspended.
The tripartite talks, then, are not situated within a framework of realpolitik where parties with some measure of power put practical politics on the table and demands are made and tradeoffs are offered which in the end please the constituencies of the players.
In our tripartite forum, the big one is the government and when it feels like, it summons the little subordinates. This is the opposition in today’s Guyana.

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