PROROGATION HAS NOT FAILED

Dec 07, 2014 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Prorogation has not failed; it continues to succeed. It was the PPPC that instituted prorogation, and the PPPC has achieved its objective in proroguing parliament.
The real purpose of prorogation was never about dialogue. This was only an excuse used by the government to justify its action of proroguing parliament. The ultimate purpose of prorogation was to annul the threat of a no-confidence motion against the government. The passage of this motion would have forced the government to resign.  So long as the government stays in office, prorogation would have succeeded.
In the wake of prorogation, the government proposed dialogue. What else could it have proposed? The opposition insisted that there will be no dialogue so long as parliament is prorogued. The President formally invited the Leader of the Opposition. He, as expected, declined the invitation.
The private sector has tried to resolve the impasse. It met with the opposition parties and the government. It has made a proposal to resolve the crisis.
The proposal by the Private Sector Commission (PSC) has not been enthusiastically received. The Leader of the Opposition has been respectful to the proposal, but does not see any use in dialogue, since he feels previous talks were unfruitful on the very issues which are supposed to be discussed under the PSC’s proposal.
The Opposition Leader may have a point. The government had ample opportunity to negotiate an agreement with APNU on local government elections. In fact at one stage, APNU was deceived into believing that it had an agreement with the PPPC government.
APNU seems to have belatedly come to the realization that the PPPC has never been willing to make concessions outside of pressure. This is why Desmond Hoyte, dangerously, but accurately, observed that there is only one language that the PPPC understands, and that is pressure.
From the Dialogue Process following the 1997 elections to Corbin’s Constructive Engagement, the PPPC has failed to  make meaningful concessions or has failed to honour its commitments arising out of the engagement process.
When it comes also to the National Stakeholders’ Forum, the PPPC uses that grouping for political purposes, only meeting with them when there is a crisis, and only to explain and gain their support, without meaningfully seeking a partnership with these stakeholders. This was the way things were under the Jagdeo administration and this is the way it has been under Donald Ramotar. Nothing is likely to change.
The Private Sector Commission may be well-intentioned when it calls for dialogue. But it seems to have overlooked the government’s record on this score. They have also overlooked the objectives of the opposition.
The opposition is not interested in dialogue on the issues which the PSC proposed for discussion between the parties. APNU wanted to test the political waters by moving towards local government elections. The PNCR has always seen Executive power as the ultimate objective of the party’s existence. Given the minority government that it now faces, the PNCR wanted to know where it stood in terms of national support. Local government elections would have served as a referendum on this support. This is why APNU wanted local government elections.
The AFC on the other hand was interested in avoiding local government elections, because the AFC cannot win any municipality or NDC should local government elections be held. The AFC therefore had to find a way of avoiding the embarrassment and humbling that it would receive should local government elections be conducted.
The PPPC is not interested in local government elections, even though it was likely to win those elections. It was not interested in local government elections because the powerful economic forces that support the party were not keen on expending money on “low stakes,” which is how the oligarchy views local government elections. They were keeping the hundreds of millions for campaign financing for general elections.
The PSC tried to do what good negotiators do. They tried to give each side what they presumed each side wanted. The PSC presumed that the government wanted dialogue and that the opposition wanted the restoration of the 10th Parliament. And so their proposal was built along the lines of satisfying both of these objectives. Academically, the merit of the PSC’s proposal was that it met what the PSC considered as the objectives of both sides.
The PSC however was only dealing with appearances, because the ultimate objective of APNU is for a referendum on its support; the ultimate objective of the AFC is to run from local government elections; and the ultimate objective of the PPPC is to repel any no-confidence motion.
And so the PSC’s proposal will not find traction with the political parties. The only way out of this crisis, and the predicament in general in the country, is through elections. This is what the PSC should be addressing.

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