GOVERNMENT IS ABOUT THE NEEDS OF THE PEOPLE

Dec 30, 2012 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The People’s Progressive Party has had one year to assess why it failed to gain a majority in the November 2011 elections, and in so doing, to take corrective action to reverse the electoral decline of the party.
If, however, the party’s assessment is flawed, then the corrective action that they will be taking will not address the real causes of the party’s electoral decline. This is the danger that the party faces because of its refusal to accept that it lost the elections primarily because of disaffection with the policies of the Jagdeo administration. Unless the PPP is willing to accept this fact, they will employ the wrong strategies.
Many of the present crop of government leaders were part of the Jagdeo administration and therefore are not likely to want to accept that things went wrong because of what happened during the last five years of the previous administration.
It is no coincidence that it was during this period that the country got stung by the powerful economic grouping which has emerged and which has the influence to point the government in its direction even to the point of having the government contribute generously to the private causes of individuals who form part of this powerful economic class.
Strangely, this class, which found favour with the previous administration, has contributed little to the economic growth that the country has been experiencing.
The PPP basked in the glory of its economic growth, but failed to address how this growth was benefiting the poor. They went as far as threatening to derecognize the union of sugar workers, and it was only after the Alliance For Change picked up the cause of sugar workers from Diamond that the government agreed to pay the workers severance. This contrasts sharply with the ease with which the government was willing to help its powerful friends, sometimes going as far as granting concessions which were outside of the law, a situation that had to be later remedied.
The PPP therefore has to address the problem of the model that it has promoted over the past twenty years. All over the world where such a model has been implemented, it has led to an increase in inequality and has benefited the urban areas more than the rural areas.
This is perhaps one of the major failures of the Jagdeo administration. It failed to address rural underdevelopment, a shocking development considering that many of the leaders of the PPP have their roots in rural communities and the party itself draws the bulk of its support from outside of rural areas.
The PPP also failed to rein in some of the new leaders whom they appointed in certain regions and who created a great deal of disaffection by their haughtiness and arrogance. Many of these leaders were more interested in dealing with contracts than in addressing the day-to-day problems of the people, and this is one area where the PPP alienated its supporters. Government is about meeting the needs of the people, not about contracts.
The PPP was also complacent. The youth arm of the PPP was totally absent from the campaign and was replaced by volunteers who went around sharing out flyers and other election memorabilia, as if that could have compensated for five years of neglecting the problems of the people. The PPP took its supporters for granted, thinking they could have swayed them with their campaign messages, and failed.
The PPP however is not accepting these shortcomings. It is not accepting that it needs to dump some of its leaders within the party rather than recycling them from out of the regions to party headquarters.
The PPP has a serious crisis, because some of the very individuals that the party is sticking with are bringing very little value to the party and are being entrusted with serious responsibilities because they are considered as loyalists.
Well, the loyalists failed to bring home a majority in the last elections and therefore the party should experiment with competence ahead of loyalty. What the party needs are persons who are effective and who can get the job done rather than loyalists who have long alienated themselves and the party from the people.
How does the PPP expect these individuals, many of whom are despised by the people, to be able to bring back the votes that the PPP failed to gain in the last general and regional elections?
Does the General Secretary of the PPP really expect that the supporters of the party are going to come back on board with the same old faces dominating? Does he really expect that the support of the powerful economic class which emerged during the last five years of the Jagdeo administration is going to help his party to convincingly win the next elections, whenever it is held?
That powerful economic class is only safeguarding its interests, and since it is believed that there are persons within the government and party who are silent partners in this economic class, the primary concern of the political cronies of this powerful economic class is not the party or the government, it is their own interests.
These lackeys of the powerful economic class must be purged from the government because their interests do not lie with the people, but with their own bulging pockets and the profit-line of their economic masters.

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