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Members Should Choose Leadership of Parties

Sep 11, 2013 Letters

Dear Editor,
M. Maxwell is being pretentious when querying whether the PPP August 2013 congress elections were manipulated (KN Sep 8).  I have no confirmation about electoral manipulations. Like Maxwell, I just heard allegations.
The questions for Maxwell are: Which party’s elections were/are not manipulated in Guyana? Which of the parties allow a true, open vote by its members or supporters in selecting its leader and party executive or as M.Ps or Councillors?
There were numerous complaints about rigging in the PNC last internal election – Several delegates I spoke with said that they were not allowed to vote, that they felt the outcome was manipulated. Many who were denied voting rights felt Carl Greenidge won the vote. Some also felt Dr. Faith Harding was cheated in the leadership vote.
And there were also serious issues with the selection of the leader and executive of Maxwell’s own party, the AFC.  Has Maxwell forgotten the arrangement to rotate position among a select few – Is that not manipulation? And how about the selection of delegates to the convention? So it seems that all the parties have serious problems with their elections denying people an opportunity for participation in affairs of their party.
It is about time, therefore, for a national policy (law) on how party leaders, executives and candidates for government office are chosen – a process that should be fair, open, transparent giving all members (and even supporters) of a party an opportunity to vote for a choice of candidates to lead a party as well as in the selection of party executives and representatives in parliament and local government.
In America, machine party politics similar to Guyana was entrenched for over one hundred year in which selection of leaders, party executives and candidates for office were manipulated by the leadership — Tammany Hall politics.
Voters took the parties to court and the bourgeois judges (as our socialist leaders in Guyana like to call them) ruled in favour of the working class – that is right, the working class was empowered by independent judges in bourgeois America allowing them to choose their leaders.
The court ruled that the party members must be allowed to choose their leaders and candidates for office in primary elections or some other fair democratic process in which members have the ballot.  Ironically, Tuesday was Primary election day across America and the working class from Guyana, now settled in America, are enjoying that right to vote for the leaders of their party as well as to select a candidate to represent them in office. Why shouldn’t the working class in socialist Guyana be given similar powers as the working class in imperialist America?
Will Maxwell and his friends in the AFC be prepared to join voters in a class action lawsuit to help democratize party elections? And will the AFC itself allow one person, one vote in the selection of its executives? Maxwell’s party has a lot of lawyers – please file a petition in court to empower the voters to select the leaders of parties.
Vishnu Bisram

 

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