Boom and boomerang in 2015

Jan 13, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The holiday season is over and people have settled into the routine of life. On the agenda of every Guyanese as January gets older will be the results of the forthcoming General Elections. For most Guyanese it will be the most decisive election since the first National Election in the early fifties.
If the opposition wins Guyana’s history will unfold in a remarkable way that maybe has no parallel. The 1992 poll took its place in history and it was a phenomenal moment. Guyanese just wanted to see another government other than one run by the PNC. But the importance of the 2015 poll will overshadow the importance of the 1992 event in ways that words may not be adequate to describe.
Short of nasty racist conspiracies by the PPP, the PPP is likely to lose power and that includes even a return of a PPP plurality. If the PPP doesn’t win a majority but clinch the highest number of votes, it will not be able to govern because the opposition will demand that the exercise of power be inclusive because after all, the electorate did not give any party a majority.
Either way the PPP domination will be over. The historical importance of the 2015 election is that it will mark the most profound turning point in post-Independent Guyana. An opposition victory will bring about the end of the PPP as a political unit. If anything is inevitable about the opposition in government it is a judicial enquiry into the PPP’s stewardship.
There is absolutely no way the leadership of the PPP can escape criminal charges. The tenure of the Jagdeo/Ramotar governments has been characterized by the descent into the deeper recesses of appalling misuse of power, rendezvous with the world of narco-trafficking and money laundering, murder, violence and unimaginable corruption.
If there is anything that is predictable after the 2015 election is criminal investigation into the conduct of Guyana’s affairs under Messrs Jagdeo and Ramotar. Even the might of the US and the power of the United Nations will not be able to stop such an enquiry if they so request of the new government. I predict that the most worried politicians anywhere in the world in 2015 will be found in Guyana.
Just put yourself in the place of people who have committed abominable crimes against a country and they are about to lose power. So what are my predictions? It is hard to be precise with an electorate like what Guyana has, but I honestly think the PNC will try in colossal ways to collect a huge percentage of that 130, 000 number that did not vote in 2011. The PNC believes a huge chunk is their people. I agree.
Moses Nagamootoo is going to be an enormous headache for the PPP. There is simply no leader in the PPP that can damage him. The PPP will self-destruct trying to tarnish his image because it does not have competent spin doctors. With all the money the PPP shared out in 2011, its spin doctors were hopelessly incompetent.
Rickey Singh, the Guyanese journalist in Barbados, was the PPP election consultant in 2011. But he advised them from Barbados. He will do so again this year. Singh is in his mid-seventies. One does not know what Singh can do for the PPP’s election campaign.
The AFC will pick up more votes this time around because it had no serious campaign in Region Three and in the whole of Essequibo in 2011. It is not going to repeat that mistake in 2015. The dimension of the 2015 elections that anyone can predict is the PPP’s self-destruction. It will take three forms.
First, the PPP feels that it has sufficient media power to win back a majority. The asininity of this needs not detain us here. Suffice it to say it had the same media influence in 2011, plus Jagdeo’s Day of Appreciation, yet it lost its majority. In 2015 it will have BOOM FM, the radio station of Jagdeo’s boys, Hits and Jams. Boom FM may boomerang against the PPP and BOOM FM may likely see Jelly’s last jam in 2015 (you know who is Jelly?). Any jamming and any hitting in the campaign won’t be coming from Ramotar which brings us to the second factor.
If the PPP goes back with Ramotar the opposition will jump so high with joy that they might get stuck and a crane will have to pull them out. Ramotar is not a winning candidate. Thirdly, the PPP will enter the campaign abusing its power right up to polling day.

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