Freddie kissoon column - A minority PPP government in 2015 will increase the PPP’s inflexibility

Freddie kissoon column – A minority PPP government in 2015 will increase the PPP’s inflexibility

Feb 05, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Outgoing British High Commissioner, Andrew Ayre, made the point that a minority government has to work with a majority parliament. He went on to explain why and though avoided blunt language, implied that it is commonsensical to do so.
Mr. Ayre did not name any specific country but some of the most famous states in the world have minority governments. They include the United States, Israel, Germany and Sweden etc. Barack Obama hasn’t got majority congressional support. In Sweden the Left just won the elections but fell short of a parliamentary majority.
A minority government either bargains with the majority parliament or it secures parliamentary assistance from one or more smaller parties. Mr. Ayre comes from the sort of political culture where this outcome is as normal as people sheltering from rain. Unfortunately, the normal world of politics from which Mr. Ayre comes does not exist in Guyana.
If the PPP wins the plurality in the 2015 election, it will be even more poisonous and recalcitrant than in 2011. Psychology explains this. If the PPP wins the plurality, it will contextualize the results within the configuration of a three-party contest. It will tell itself that given the unmitigated assault it endured since 2011, it still secured more seats than the PNC and more seats than the AFC. It will never tell itself it lost to the anti-PPP forces or the opposition itself.
This was the context it used in 2011 to demand that the Speaker come from the choice of the PPP. The PPP argued that APNU should not choose the Speaker because the PPP secured more votes than APNU. In the same vein it rejected a Speaker from the AFC ranks because it got more votes than the AFC. This was the logic the PPP used to reject the parliamentary opposition’s power in the House.
There was never any recognition by the PPP that it was a minority government after 2011. The concept of a minority government was never and will never be acknowledged by the PPP because its configuration is of a three-way race and who wins more than the other wins the right to rule.
Operating with this methodology then, at the psychological level, the PPP accepted that it was a majority government. This explains three years of total rejection of the opposition’s agenda because there were two agendae – one from the AFC and the other from APNU. For the PPP both of these parties were minority organizations because the PPP beat both of them at the elections.
Making concessions, seeking compromise, and listening to the opposition were unthinkable for the PPP because it was the winner of the 2011 elections. This weird psychology is going to repeat itself if the PPP is returned without a parliamentary majority after May 11, 2015.
What the Guyanese must fear is that state functions will be paralyzed again, development will be stultified again, social pessimism will increase and Guyana will descend further into national insanity if the PPP wins the plurality because the PPP will harden its inflexibility. Simply put, the PPP will tell the nation that it won the 2015 elections because it beat APNU and it beat the AFC.
This contorted psychology is the greatest danger facing Guyana if the PPP is again made a minority government. My predictions are a widening of its hegemony, more arrogance of power, more political incestuousness, wider corruption and continued domination should the PPP secure the plurality and not a majority.
It is easy to explain this. Even if the combined opposition leads the PPP by more than one seat after the 2015 elections, the PPP will not change its attitude to power control because the psychology of deception will prevent the PPP from accepting that the combined opposition beat it in the election.
I honestly believe that if this country reproduces the 2011 results, the confrontations will increase, gridlock will increase, battle lines will be drawn up. Those who believe that if the PPP wins the plurality again, the PPP will likely make a pitch to either the AFC or APNU are mistaken.
It is not in the nature of the PPP to concede territory even if it is at a disadvantage. Guyana is not your normal polity. Whereas in most, if not all, countries, minority presidencies will have to concede ground to the majority legislature the PPP will not do it.
This country is in for serious problems in its governance structures if the PPP is again the winner of the presidency but not the Parliament. That’s the way I see it. That is my opinion. What’s yours?

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Freddie kissoon column – A minority PPP government in 2015 will increase the PPP’s inflexibility

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