PPP’s gambit versus Ramotar’s insecurity

Apr 10, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The talk is that the government will call a general election if the 2013 Budget is voted down. Inside the PPP there is bound to be fierce debate. The tantalizing question in debating a snap poll is the mind of Donald Ramotar. Ramotar should be the last person to want to face early elections.
First, he didn’t bring victory the last time. Secondly, his competitors inside the PPP would argue that they stand a better chance of going over the fifty percent mark this time. Thirdly, if the PPP loses the plurality this time, Ramotar would have only served eighteen months.
The choices facing Ramotar are either to take five years then call it George or risk being one of the shortest serving heads of government in modern times. Ramotar will be more inclined to go with 2016, because he can’t be that stupid to believe he will be the PPP’s candidate in 2016. Commonsensically then, Ramotar should stick with his five-year tenure. One suspects that it is what he will do. The curiosity is if he has the authority inside the PPP to reject a snap election decision.
In the scheme of things in Guyana, the President of the country is the big and bad man in every sphere, whether in his party or in government. Burnham, Cheddi Jagan, Janet Jagan and Bharrat Jagdeo as President were totally in charge of governmental and party affairs. Under Mrs. Jagan and Bharrat Jagdeo, the PPP leader and the President was not the same person, but the President was the person who ruled the party. The break with this pattern came with Ramotar.
It is no secret in this country that the route Mr. Ramotar used to achieve the presidency and the behind-the scenes power of Mr. Jagdeo leave President Ramotar without total control.
It is no secret either that since the assumption to power of Ramotar some key PPP players who were circumspect or careful about their mouthing off under Mr. Jagdeo behave as if they are in charge since 2012 began. This newfound boldness is coming from the old stalwarts and some new faces.
Their public, political posturing definitely gives off the impression that Donald Ramotar is not completely in control of the direction power is going.
Assuming what I have postulated here has evidential integrity then Donald Ramotar is in trouble in resisting a snap poll decision. I will stick with what I have posited here and go further and say Ramotar will advise Freedom House against a snap election decision, but there will be a fight.
It is simply not in Ramotar’s interest to return to the voters eighteen months after November 2011. What is the reason for the PPP wanting early elections? Three reasons stand out. First, the old Stalinist ideologues are so inebriated with Machiavellian power that at the psychic level they are tormented that the National Assembly is the only receptacle of authority in Guyana not under their aegis.
This columnist takes the position that the old guards want fresh elections simply because they view the loss of Parliament as a laceration to their hubris, hauteur and pomposity. For them it is a personal insult. It has damaged their messianic ideology and they cannot live with that.
Secondly, the young ambitious monsters are supporting the demand of the Freedom House gerontocracy because it gels with their uncontrollable ambitions. About five of them want a snap poll because they feel the PPP will win and their raging desires will be fulfilled – they become president.
Thirdly, in the PPP as a whole, the feeling is that another round of voting will favour the PPP, because it has the money for the campaign that the AFC and APNU lack totally. Added to this is the deep belief of the PPP’s upper and second tier leaders that both the AFC and APNU have lost support and are vulnerable to decimation.
The trouble with psychology in general is that it is deceiving. The greater trouble with psychology is that when possessed by dictators it leads to self-destruction.
The psychology of the PPP leaders instructs them that the AFC and APNU are weak and losing ground. What is completely shut out from the collective mind of the PPP leadership is that they are losing ground faster than their two opponents. Shut out from the heads of all PPP leaders is the philosophical lesson that human beings are generally decent people who do not accept and approve of human indecency and will reject cruel leaders that hurt their fellow citizens.
A snap poll will bring self-destruction to people too ignorant to understand the lessons of history.

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PPP’s gambit versus Ramotar’s insecurity

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