The PPP Congress

Aug 05, 2013 Editorial

The People’s Progressive Party (PPP) completed their long-delayed and twice-postponed Congress yesterday. Since this venerable institution is supposed to give legitimacy to the workings of the party between its convocations, the long hiatus placed a question mark on all that has transpired since 2010.
Very notably, of course, there was a selection of the Presidential candidate for the 2011 elections, which resulted, from the PPP’s perspective, the debacle of conceding a majority to the Opposition and the latter’s control of the National Assembly. While details are slim because of the control exercised over members of the journalistic fraternity at the three-day affair, it appears that the latter outcome occupied a very prominent place on the agenda.
It was very unfortunate, however, that there was a continued and stubborn refusal by the leadership, who set the agenda at Congress, to grapple with the root causes of that reversal. Take the issue of corruption in governmental operations, which has emerged as the single greatest reason for their traditional supporters to desert them in mass numbers: this was only grudgingly and perfunctorily acknowledged. While this Editorial is being written before the members of the Central Executive had been elected by the Congress, we are willing to predict that most of the names that have been “called” whenever corruption is discussed will be placed back on that body that controls the party between Congresses.
There has been enough information shared by insiders (now departed) about the workings of the Congress to justify our use of the work “placed”. The salient point is that those that pull the levers of power in the PPP will continue to insist that corruption is simply a matter of lower level clerks taking home government stationery. We reiterate our implacable stand, founded on the extensive investigations we have made and reported on, that corruption is a cancer eating away the entrails of this country. The PPP supporters, as well as the rest of Guyana are not prepared to put up with it any longer. Even if the party is not thinking of the country, we hoped the prospect of losing their hold on the government might serve to focus their minds on the problem. The other disappointment of the Congress was a perpetuation of the new culture of the “cuss down” that was introduced in the last decade.
It was hoped that the departure of several senior Ex-Co members would have precipitated serious reflections on what are evidently systemic factors operating in the party. To simply berate the departed as “nemakharams” does not help the process of rebuilding their base. This attitude is at variance with the reiteration by Congress that they are still guided by the principles of their founder Dr. Cheddi Jagan. The Marxist-Leninist rule of “criticism and self criticism” was very much a guiding principle of his approach to party discipline.
Mistakes can be made by anyone and these can only be corrected if they are identified. Another disappointment with the Congress was that the expansion of our democratic horizons, demanded by the votes of the people at the last general elections, was again ignored. That the control of the Legislature came out of the will of the majority of the people of this country was not even acknowledged. The government, for instance, only began sharing information on the proposed investment on Amaila Falls Hydro-Electric Project (AFHEP) which has now grown to one-thirds of our Gross National Product (GNP), because the Opposition-controlled Parliament demanded details. However, at the Congress, this demand for financial justification, of an investment which all of us will be paying for, was presented as “derailing development”.
It is the democratic right of the Opposition to ask, “At what price, development?” Whether we agree with the conclusions of the Opposition or not, we must agree that they and the rest of the country have the right to ask questions. Since the Congress was held in Berbice, the nearby Skeldon Factory should have settled the justification issue.

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The PPP Congress

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The PPP Congress

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