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PPP’s desperation palpable

Aug 24, 2014 AFC Column, Features / Columnists

On Thursday June 26th last, President Donald Ramotar declared with attempted bravado that his People’s Progressive Party is duly prepared for general elections. His Excellency’s declaration came in response to the then imminent threat of the Alliance For Change-piloted no-confidence motion against his minority government.
President Ramotar’s declaration has since been exposed as rhetorical camouflage for what appears to be a dreadful despair that has enveloped Freedom House. The realization that the party is fortuitously clinging to power and will inevitably be stripped of it whenever the elections are called appears palpable in the action, words, and rhyme emanating from Robb Street.
There is a cacophony of power plays.
In one corner those who have reason to recognize that a post-PPP government inquiry is likely to determine that they may not be able to legally account for their wealth, are in an obvious scramble to empanel their riches and freedom for their pending sojourn in opposition or exile. We noticed for example the refusal of one Cabinet member to join his colleagues in a walkout of an ambassadorial residence after a vulgar and repugnant outburst. Was this official caught in an act of attempted cozying up to Uncle Sam for post-electoral protection?
In another corner the ambitious among them are engaged in fitful and desultory schemes of power brokerage. Demanding that excessively photoshopped photos of themselves be plastered in classrooms and on dilapidated lantern poles is not beneath them.
In a third corner the General Secretary is employing the use of a combination of bombast and fatuousness in a valiant crusade to discredit the electoral commission’s readiness.
In a fourth corner the Cabinet Secretary is issuing remonstrative challenges to the electoral body to demonstrate readiness.
In a fifth corner the PPP-appointed GECOM commissioners are openly defiant of the organization’s public affirmations of preparedness.
In a sixth corner a presidential advisor and a member of Cabinet conspired to launch that bizarre tirade against a prominent member of the diplomatic community in defiance of calls for a correction to the absurdity of a 20-year absence of local government elections.
With the no-confidence motion being inevitable and with the PPP having recognized that it will be a fatal blow to their time in government, they have been engaged in desperate and scatter-brained strategy sessions. It appears as though their latest tactic is to seek to avoid the no-confidence motion by considering the calling of elections before Parliament resumes in October. The party has put out feelers in the public domain to this effect.
Such is the intense state of desperation that President Ramotar has been attempting to shape public opinion of GECOM’s readiness by openly contradicting what GECOM itself has offered.
President Ramotar recently remarked, “GECOM continues to say that they are ready for the election, but I think they could very well be more ready for a national election than a local government election, because there is a different procedure that has to be going through with local government election.”
The President is now engaged in the foggy business of conjecture and supposition on as serious matters as democracy and electoral readiness.
The full gamut of evidence having been considered, the conclusion is inescapable – that the People’s Progressive Party is barely and desperately clinging to power and that they are acutely aware of this. The national sentiment, most obvious in the calls for local government election, is approaching an irrepressible tide of beleaguered discontent with the ruling PPP. Whenever, and under whatever circumstances elections are called the result is inevitable – that the PPP will lose the government.
The empyreal Cheddi Jagan’s party is being disassembled not as much from without as more certainly and discernibly from within. Those living within earshot of Babu John, the cremation site of Dr. Jagan, may have tales to tell. He must be weeping at the ruin of the party he spent a lifetime to build and strengthen.

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