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A politician has to bring something to the table
Mar 13, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
Guyanese politics is very complicated. And it gets more complex each day. You just learn to live with these inexplicabilities and get on with your life. But these things will never go away. Because of race politics, the two major parties, PNC and PPP, are forced to embrace highly identifiable names in the opposing ethnic camps and embrace them. One cannot argue with that because it is a zero sum game
If the PPP says that race does not matter and it will not seek out big names in the African community, then it runs the risk of being criticized as an exclusive ethnic entity. The PNC faces the identical imbroglio.
If it does not look for top Indian names, then its rival will tell the nation it is a Black people party. What gets lost in that configuration are talent, leadership and integrity.
You are bringing in a Black personality and an Indian name just for the sake of image but not substance. The fundamental value of politics is thrown out the window – a politician must bring something to the table. Mr. Burnham started it a long time ago.
He “stole” Indian faces from the PPP, it didn’t work. They didn’t bring anything to the table. The PPP, cut from the same cloth of the Burnhamite PNC, has been doing the same thing. It continues to explode in the face of the PPP – their African converts are not influential people at all in the African communities across Guyana. Be that as it may, we will have to live with that mediocrity in Guyanese politics.
It is a completely different scenario within each party (PNC and PPP) within their own ethnic constituency. Here the question becomes all-consuming – an African in the PNC and an Indian in the PPP must have some asset that the party can use.
I may not have been told the full story of what happened between the WPA and AFC a year before the general elections, but my information was that the AFC told the WPA that it cannot have a coalition with it but it would welcome the WPA’s leadership into the AFC.
When I asked why, I was told the AFC didn’t see what the WPA was bringing to the table. The AFC felt that it had eminent leaders from across the racial, political and religion divide. It didn’t see the logic of having a coalition named AFC/WPA because it could not envisage that it could secure electoral capital from such a formal alliance.
The leaders of the Jamaican Labour Party had to see political capital in Bruce Golding to have taken him back and he left the party and formed a rivalry group. They made him the Prime Ministerial candidate and he won the election for them.
Someone like Moses Nagamootoo is unique on the political landscape. He can deliver to the PPP if they take him back. He could put something on the table
Does Robert Corbin replicate for the PNC what Nagamootoo could do for the PPP? It is difficult to answer that in the affirmative because Nagamootoo brought votes to the AFC and in the process created history. Mr. Corbin did not participate in the last national election, on the contrary. He did not insert his presence on the hustings.
The consensus among political observer is that APNU revived the PNC during the election and that if there was a PNC under Corbin then maybe African Guyanese who voted for the AFC in 2006 would have done the same in 2011. In other words, Mr. Corbin was the problem in 2006.
The supporters of the retention of Mr. Corbin as leader of the PNC should initiate a public intellectual polemic to explain what he will bring to the table should he stay on as leader of the PNC. This is assuming that Mr. Corbin has not dissolved his ambition to remain as the head of the PNC.
He had indicated several times that he was leaving the PNC hierarchy. But if he is, why would some highly placed PNC stalwarts propose his name? His rule as Opposition Leader was not dynamic and he wasn’t a God-send during the elections. Therefore it would be interesting to see a polemic that presents the qualities of Mr. Corbin in this new era of opposition control of Parliament.
I was told that there is a situation that favours Corbin. The new APNU configuration lacks any radicalism whatsoever and in such a situation Mr. Corbin’s experience will count in crucial times. Really!
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