When appreciation turns to depreciation

Aug 12, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There are photos of Uncle Donald enjoying himself at the Guyana Festival. In one frame he is hugging an African dancer. Then there is a shot of him with an African drum between his legs beating away. Other photos have the President dancing with the performers. There was no back-balling as when he performed that act with a dancer at an Old Year’s Night party.
The ambience reminded us of Bharrat Jagdeo’s Day of Appreciation. The Chronicle put that crowd at fifty thousand. Jagdeo brought in well known names to eulogize him. The dancers gyrated as if they were afflicted with Saint Vitus dance disease. Jagdeo walked around the pavilions at the National Stadium and hugged those fifty thousand souls who hugged him back.
Months after, the day of appreciation turned into depreciation. The PPP lost the general elections and is now a minority government, and which in months’ time have to vacate power if a parliamentary no-confidence motion is passed.
Today, the PPP cannot make up its mind which of the two personalities caused the defeat. Was it Jagdeo who was simply a terribly wrong human for the post of President or Donald Ramotar who the Indians, especially in Berbice, feel was not the right man for the job?
The performance of Donald Ramotar at the Guyana Festival gives one a sense of dèjá vu. Jagdeo had his festival – Day of Appreciation.
Then he legally retired from the Presidency, campaigned for his party and lost a majority vote. Ramotar will have his Guyana Festival, will campaign for his party’s presidential candidate in the 2015 election, and will lose either outright or a majority
Notice that I said Ramotar will not be his party’s Presidential candidate. I believe this most absolutely. My take on the no-confidence vote is that the PPP will not resign and permit a general election. That will have hellish implications. For the sake of argument let’s say that everything will go smoothly and there will be a national poll next year; this will be the greatest test for the PPP since it was formed. The risk is the greatest one the PPP will be facing and they will not gamble on Ramotar
If the election produced a minority government again for the PPP, the game is virtually over. The PPP will have to share power.
The sections of Guyana that at the moment support the minority Presidency will not do so in 2015. They will contend that is the new reality and they will put pressure on the PPP to go in a new direction.
I have absolutely no respect, not even an inch, for a body called the Private Sector Commission. It consists of people who have no nationalist blood in their veins and will continue to embrace an authoritarian PPP government.
But if the 2015 election produces another PPP minority government, the business community will become afraid of permanent instability and force the PPP into a zone of compromise
The worst case scenario for the PPP is an outright loss. This is an environment that the PPP cannot live with because the new government will be in a frenetic mood to hold a Commission of Inquiry into the Jagdeo period. The implications will be nightmarish for every single person associated with the PPP and who may have benefited from the abuse of power and illegal transactions.
I strongly believe that both physically and mentally the PPP will not survive the probe into its rule. There will be prosecutions, loss of enormous assets, steady migration and employment removals (e.g. special contracts). There will be free elections in the rice industry thus obliterating the Rice Producers Association, a PPP front body. GAWU, the PPP union will die a natural death.
For the PPP then, the 2015 election is life or death. They will want to win back a majority and they are not going to gamble on a Ramotar candidacy. The special problem Ramotar has is that he is not a Jagdeo. Whatever Jagdeo wanted from the PPP, he got because he invented a machine whereby the State patronized the entire PPP
Through state power, Jagdeo reshaped the PPP. Ramotar’s men are Jagdeo’s creations who now sit at the helm at Freedom House. Ramotar does not have a powerful constituency in the PPP war room as Jagdeo did.
In fact, Ramotar himself was one of Jagdeo’s underlings. The point is, Jagdeo had no challengers. Ramotar has. And those challengers are going for a new 2015 candidate. In the meantime, Ramotar should enjoy his festival and have his day of appreciation because after 2015, it becomes a day of depreciation.

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