Realpolitik and the mysteries of the APNU-AFC Govt.

Sep 30, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Except for Moses Nagamootoo and Carl Greenidge, no other Minister in the APNU+AFC coalition including President Granger has experience at every level in the running of a government. President Granger had authority over a huge institution -, the army. But the army is only part of Guyana.
Winston Jordan was Budget Director but not in charge of the entire Ministry of Finance. It means then that there will be hiccups along the way. A nation has to be patient with a regime that is learning.
But there is a big but. If you are learning and you do things that depart from what the nation is accustomed then explanations are logical. If you choose not to offer reasons then suspicion about intentions creep into citizens’ curious minds.  One hopes that the new government is aware of the pitfalls of power.
Enter Transparency Institute. This NGO has leveled some justified criticism at the new government.  The NGO took a look at the renaming of all the Ministries except Foreign Affairs and wondered why there weren’t at least a publicly aired justification.
As a social analyst my role is to know what goes on in the halls of power, but yet I am still confused about these name-changes that cause you to wonder who recommended them and why. I was having lunch with a Member of Parliament, Michael Carrington, at Excellence Restaurant on Charlotte Street on Monday afternoon, and we kept confusing the Ministry of Social Protection with the Ministry of Communities. Surely if a political analyst and a Member of Parliament cannot get it right then what about our lay folks? At the recent fund-raising brunch of the Burnham Foundation, I kept confusing Ministry of Social Protection and Ministry of Social Cohesion. I hope I get it right soon.
What Transparency Institute missed in its curiosity about the name-changing are some mysteries that cry out for a logical adumbration. Why are there three Ministers in the Ministry of Amerindian (oops) Indigenous Affairs?  There is the enigma of the huge Ministry of Agriculture having one Minister. Surely, there needs to be an explanation. This is what Transparency Institute is asking. After four months, can’t the nation get an explanation? Maybe just a brief one but one nevertheless.
I cannot see the wisdom of having three Ministers in one of the smallest ministries in the government. Let us accept that since it is a coalition, one Minister was reserved for APNU and the other for AFC. But why three?  How do you explain just a single Minister in Agriculture? There is a partial answer in the Cummingsburg Accord that Ministry was assigned to the AFC. One assumes that APNU took a hands-off approach. The AFC should tell the country if the Ministry’s affairs can be handled by one Minister only. An elaboration needs to be forthcoming.
The area of Cabinet changes that Transparency did not touch on, is the erasure of the Ministry of Youth and its integration into the Ministry of Education. My eagerness to see the elucidation increases every day. This country has one of the youngest populations among the other nations of the world with colossal problems that beset its youth sector. I think if the society was canvassed on whether to leave the Ministry of Youth or collapse it with the Ministry of Education, a poll would show that a hundred percent of those surveyed would vote for the retention of the Ministry of Youth. This is one aspect of governance the new regime got not partially, but completely wrong.
Transparency Institute looked at the Ramayya imbroglio and interpreted his employment as something that went bad and was patched up. It was much more than that Ramayya threw up his hands in despair and publicly exclaimed that he exited the AFC because his efforts as an AFC leader in Berbice during the 2015 election campaign were unrewarded. Ramayya intoned that he was both insulted and mistreated.
He was suddenly made the Regional Executive Officer for Region 6. Any first year politics student would know that it was a chess move of realpolitik by the APNU-AFC administration
But if realpolitik was the major factor in the reintegration of Ramayya, then the choice of Minister for the Agriculture Ministry is confusing. There is not even an ounce of realpolitik in that selection. Any first year student of politics would tell you that given the types of constituencies that occupy the agricultural sector of Guyana, then realpolitik would dictate the kind of person you put in charge of that ministry.
The APNU+AFC’s pick was the opposite in terms of practical politics. Trial by error can prove costly.

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