Latest update November 22nd, 2024 1:00 AM
May 10, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
There are three explanations flying around about the tempestuous cries the PPP is making about the money taken away from some areas of governmental spending in the 2012 budget. One is to create an atmosphere of an impeding election which puts the AFC and APNU in election overdrive thereby diverting them away from a relentless crusade of exposure and investigation that they both promised the nation in their respective campaigns last year.
Secondly, the PPP is trying to set the scene of a backlash against further opposition attacks on its bad governance by going on the offensive in order to blunt the sharpness of future battles.
Finally, there is the assessment that the PPP feels that it has achieved a major victory over the cries of budget cuts and could win a majority if a national snap poll is put into operation. Which of the three has more explanatory power? It doesn’t have to be one of these factors. It could be a combination that explains the angry denunciatory mood the PPP is currently in.
I would dismiss the election possibility for two reasons. One is that there is no stratum in the PPP that is so powerful as to force President Ramotar to call another election if the President does not want to. The PPP must be the only party in the world that is not divided in its leadership even at an insignificant level. It has been historically a monolithic organization.
There were tall stories about factions that would scream at each other in the fight for the 2011 presidential slot. It didn’t happen. There is no faction at the moment that is pitted against another group over anything in the PPP.
Secondly, it is not in President Ramotar’s interest to give himself only one year of his first five-year term. Even if he finds the opposition control of Parliament over-bearing and mentally difficult to endure, he will not lop three or four years off his presidency. He will be content to do in the years to come what he is doing now – try to organize a propaganda war.
Thirdly, a snap poll does not make sense at the moment because of two opposing strands. One is the opposition has not really been dented over its budget behaviour by the PPP anti-cut war. The opposition has persuasive arguments that could reduce the effectiveness of the PPP’s anti-cut propaganda. Opposed to this is the total lack of ingenious leadership by the PPP since the November 2011 election.
The PPP has done nothing to titillate or excite the imagination of Guyanese since it became a minority government. The common sense thing to do to blunt the opposition is to invent popular policies.
Had it done so before the budget confrontation, it could have dealt a death blow to both APNU and AFC. It is not only the principles of politics that the PPP has ignored since its parliamentary defeat but commonsense too. You are a minority government, so implement popular policies that will make the country think of you in ways that are different from when they voted in the last election.
Then with a rise in admiration from the citizenry, hold your surprise national election. This writer contends that after November 28 if the PPP has increased wages and salaries by fifteen percent; free up television signals and radio licences; democratize the Chronicle and NCN; restart the grant to Critchlow Labour College, lessen its stranglehold on UG; expand the resources of the judiciary; resurrect the Ombudsman, open one of the public swimming pools to the population; put money to clean up Georgetown among other admirable pursuits, then it would have swept up a majority in any new election.
At this stage, a new contest will be self-destructive. It is this writer’s opinion that the PPP will lose more percentage points if it goes into another electoral battle. It simply has nothing going for it to take it over the fifty one percent. Mr. Ramotar isn’t going to risk it. To many in political society, the view is that the PPP will not be secure and feel secure with a Parliament that is going for the kill therefore it will gamble with another electoral contest.
I beg to disagree. We come now to the answer for the insane rage that the PPP is displaying all over Guyana over the budget reduction. The simple explanation is that it has no other alternative but to go in the countryside and spread hate among its constituencies in order to let Guyana know that it is fighting back. That is all it can do to survive.
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