Why is the APNU-AFC making the same mistakes the PPP/C made?Why is the APNU-AFC making the same mistakes the PPP/C made?

Oct 28, 2015 Letters

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Dear Editor,    
I would like to continue my discussion on the changing behavior of the Guyanese society; basically how the Guyanese society works. However, on this occasion, we will examine the behavior of political parties or organizations using the Power Distance scenario.
Power distance is the extent to which the lower ranking individuals of a society accept and expect that power is distributed unequally and it focuses on how a society manages inequalities between individuals. It reflects a culture’s attitude towards human inequality which defines itself inside organizations through a manager subordinate relationship. There are large and small power distance countries. In large power distance countries power is more centralized while in small power distance countries, power is more decentralized. In the Guyana context, the political leadership tends to lean more to large power distance while the people are moving towards a small power distance setting.
Hence this brings me to the crux of this discussion. Why did the PPP/C made some of the same mistakes when they were in government that the PNC made? Why is this current government already making some of the mistakes that the PPP/C made? Some persons are already saying that if elections were to be held tomorrow that they would vote the coalition out? Now the question here is, how is it that after a mere six months, some of the same people who so badly wanted the PPP/C out of government and wanted a change now want to  put the coalition out of power? Some persons said to me on the salary in matter for the Ministers, that the people are taking the side of the Opposition, is that really the case?  Let’s attempt to put a perspective to these matters using the power distance scenario.
Now let’s go back to the PNC government, in my view the PPP was voted out for the same reason the PNC was voted out , these two political organizations had become too much of large power distance organizations and the people who hold the real power, were then and even more so now shifting in the small power distance direction. The difference in 2015 than in 1992, however, is that the drivers of the change in the behaviour of the people that is causing the shift from large to small power distance are somewhat different.
The Alliance for Change (AFC) political party on the other hand, presented an interesting option. As a matter of fact, the whole evolution of the Alliance for Change was a shift away from the large power distance approach to the small power distance approach; hence the AFC was shifting in the same direction with the people. Now let’s look at something the PPP/C repeatedly states, that is, that the APNU is the PNC and that the AFC teamed up with the PNC to form the coalition government.  In examining this notion, I looked at several questions: Did the AFC really teamed up with the same PNC from 23 years ago? Is it possible for the PNC as an organization to have retained its, form, structure and ideology while being in opposition for 23 years? Why is it that AFC teamed up with the APNU and not the PPP/C? Did the PNC change as an organization over the past 23 years?  Here is what I came up with.
The PNC as a political organization in opposition changed over the past 23 years; I mean it had to; the world has changed over the past 23 years. The PNC over the past 23 years was shifting more to a small power distance organization. The key reason for that was that the people or followership or citizens were becoming more intolerant of unequal power and wanted power to be distributed more equally. Remember to a large extent, it is people that are creating the movement and to a lesser extent to changes in political organization. This shift continued gradually over the years which brought the organization of the PNC to come to some equilibrium point where it met with the AFC that was created by shifting away from the approach of the PPP and PNC.
However, there is another interesting dimension and that is the impact of the change in roles on the change in behavior of the political parties, or the situation the political organization finds itself in – whether it is a position of power or out of power – whether in government or opposition. Why is it that some persons who voted for the coalition would want to now vote the PPP/C back into government? Persons are asking how is it that it seems that now that the PPP/C is in the opposition, that the party now understands governance, did they suddenly woke up on 11 May, 2015.? How is it that the PPP/C seems to be aware of certain issues and the solutions to those issues after 11 May and the now government seems to be making some of the blunders that he PPP/C made? I would suggest one of the contributing factors is the change in the situation of the PPP/C and the government – meaning the position of power.  Lord Acton once said that “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.”
Finally, one can conclude that governments will continue to lose power to the Opposition in the Guyana scenario, since the real power lies in the people, particularly now that the people have realized that they hold the real power. In the Guyana case the followership is moving in the small power distance direction, hence the political party that moves with the people by decentralizing power, where superiors treat subordinates with respect, where rules and laws are administered equally, where generally there is more equality, where politics is not prone to totalitarianism; that is the party in my view that would become the government. However, the current government has to be mindful that power does not cause it to shift away from the direction of the people because in the same way their parties shifted while in opposition the PPP/C can also shift more in the direction of the people. Essentially, I have given the PPP/C the same reason to work towards getting back into power that I have given the government to work towards so that it does not get put out of power, that is, to work towards developing political organizations which are more of a small power distance nature.
Audreyanna Thomas

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