But surely…

Sep 05, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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One of the most fascinating ventures in psychology would be to look inside the mind of the collective leadership of the major opposition party, the People’s National Congress. One reduces oneself to a circus clown if one denies that our two major political parties, the PPP and the PNC, draw their essential support from ethnic constituencies. Of course, the PNC is the one that has nothing to gloat about. It has lost every national election since 1992, making it five in a row.
It has to be one of the most intriguing studies in political psychology to understand how the leadership of that party feels after losing five national elections and what it tells itself and its supporters. Of course, this writer speaks quite often to the embracers of the PNC though I hardly interface with the hierarchy of the PNC. I can tell that hierarchy how the population feels about this continued loss. The curiosity is what types of reasoning come out of the mouths and minds of the PNC’s top brass when it meets the PNC folks around Guyana.
One fact the PNC pyramid cannot hide from its membership and sympathizers is that it is the only CARICOM party that has not been in government, either as sole winner or a coalition partner, for over twenty years. The main opposition in Guyana has remained the main opposition for over two decades and this is the exception in the CARICOM region. There is talk that the PMN may beat Kamla in Trinidad the next time around. There is no guarantee that Portia in Jamaica will win again.
So what does the PNC tell Guyanese when it meets them in the villages and towns and elsewhere in Guyana? It cannot be that it tells them that it will win the next election. But surely, there has to be something more uplifting than this jejune belief? But surely, the PNC cannot be serious to think that victory is guaranteed at the next poll.
On what premise is that judgment based? What about the possibility that after losing five consecutive elections, the support-base of the PNC (the next poll, APNU will be seen as the PNC because the Leader of the Opposition and the leader of APNU is the leader of the PNC; another name change may not work) may act on the belief that elections cannot bring the PNC to power, the PNC is happy to lose elections, elections have not changed their lot, and will stay home or vote for a new Raphael Trotman
The PNC lost five seats in 2006 because a substantial percentage of PNC voters chose Raphael Trotman who left the PNC in a bitter quarrel. What happens in 2016 if there is another Raphael Trotman? The name Nigel Hughes comes to mind. What guarantee the PNC has that far from winning the 2016 poll, it may see a repetition of losses that it endured in 2006?
The PNC’s dilemma is further compounded by the fact that under the Guyana Constitution, it won five successive regional elections in Region 4 and 10, yet those municipal authorities have been subordinate to central government. For example, in the 2012 budget, Region Four’s financial outlay was cut by the Ministry of Finance by 72 percent. The PNC then is not only a perennial loser, but even when it wins it cannot deliver to its supporters.
What about these parishioners themselves? What moral criterion do they use to criticize the rural East Indian for voting the PPP into power five times? If it is wrong for Indians to vote into power a corrupt, no-good party, why should African Guyanese persist with an organization that keeps losing? What then is the thinking of the PNC?  We now enter the realm of the frightening. A situation and form of thinking that is so tragic that it is too horrible to even contemplate.
Is it possible that the PNC has reshaped its post-1992 psyche to accept itself as an opposition party? Surely, that cannot be the answer. If that was so then the PNC would not have subsumed itself under a brand new umbrella named APNU. The purpose of APNU was to market the PNC as a new configuration. It didn’t work in terms of victory. It worked in that more numbers from PNC constituencies turned out to vote and seats lost in 2006 were recaptured. But the possession of the Executive office eluded the PNC again; for the fifth time of course.
So where does the PNC go after another defeat (and another hollow victory in Region 4 and 10)? Maybe its supporters will decide that.

One of the most fascinating ventures in psychology would be to look inside the mind of the collective leadership of the major opposition party, the People’s National Congress. One reduces oneself to a circus clown if one denies that our two major political parties, the PPP and the PNC, draw their essential support from ethnic constituencies. Of course, the PNC is the one that has nothing to gloat about. It has lost every national election since 1992, making it five in a row.
It has to be one of the most intriguing studies in political psychology to understand how the leadership of that party feels after losing five national elections and what it tells itself and its supporters. Of course, this writer speaks quite often to the embracers of the PNC though I hardly interface with the hierarchy of the PNC. I can tell that hierarchy how the population feels about this continued loss. The curiosity is what types of reasoning come out of the mouths and minds of the PNC’s top brass when it meets the PNC folks around Guyana.
One fact the PNC pyramid cannot hide from its membership and sympathizers is that it is the only CARICOM party that has not been in government, either as sole winner or a coalition partner, for over twenty years. The main opposition in Guyana has remained the main opposition for over two decades and this is the exception in the CARICOM region. There is talk that the PMN may beat Kamla in Trinidad the next time around. There is no guarantee that Portia in Jamaica will win again.
So what does the PNC tell Guyanese when it meets them in the villages and towns and elsewhere in Guyana? It cannot be that it tells them that it will win the next election. But surely, there has to be something more uplifting than this jejune belief? But surely, the PNC cannot be serious to think that victory is guaranteed at the next poll.
On what premise is that judgment based? What about the possibility that after losing five consecutive elections, the support-base of the PNC (the next poll, APNU will be seen as the PNC because the Leader of the Opposition and the leader of APNU is the leader of the PNC; another name change may not work) may act on the belief that elections cannot bring the PNC to power, the PNC is happy to lose elections, elections have not changed their lot, and will stay home or vote for a new Raphael Trotman
The PNC lost five seats in 2006 because a substantial percentage of PNC voters chose Raphael Trotman who left the PNC in a bitter quarrel. What happens in 2016 if there is another Raphael Trotman? The name Nigel Hughes comes to mind. What guarantee the PNC has that far from winning the 2016 poll, it may see a repetition of losses that it endured in 2006?
The PNC’s dilemma is further compounded by the fact that under the Guyana Constitution, it won five successive regional elections in Region 4 and 10, yet those municipal authorities have been subordinate to central government. For example, in the 2012 budget, Region Four’s financial outlay was cut by the Ministry of Finance by 72 percent. The PNC then is not only a perennial loser, but even when it wins it cannot deliver to its supporters.
What about these parishioners themselves? What moral criterion do they use to criticize the rural East Indian for voting the PPP into power five times? If it is wrong for Indians to vote into power a corrupt, no-good party, why should African Guyanese persist with an organization that keeps losing? What then is the thinking of the PNC?  We now enter the realm of the frightening. A situation and form of thinking that is so tragic that it is too horrible to even contemplate.
Is it possible that the PNC has reshaped its post-1992 psyche to accept itself as an opposition party? Surely, that cannot be the answer. If that was so then the PNC would not have subsumed itself under a brand new umbrella named APNU. The purpose of APNU was to market the PNC as a new configuration. It didn’t work in terms of victory. It worked in that more numbers from PNC constituencies turned out to vote and seats lost in 2006 were recaptured. But the possession of the Executive office eluded the PNC again; for the fifth time of course.
So where does the PNC go after another defeat (and another hollow victory in Region 4 and 10)? Maybe its supporters will decide that.

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