The ship of state needs steadying

Oct 15, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

There is a problem on board the ship of State. It is not mutiny but it is sure heading into chaos.
There are too many loose cannons littering the political minefield that is known as the APNU+AFC. Persons are doing their own things, making wild statements in social media and all of this is embarrassing the government.
If this situation persists, there can be total loss of control with no one feeling that they must be accountable to higher authority. If and when this happens, it will cause serious problems for the government because no one will be taking orders or reining in the deviants.
The APNU+AFC administration is not comparable to the PPP/C. The PPP/C had a cohesive government. They all more or less belonged to the same party. The Civic component simply toed the line; it had no independent existence.
The situation is different with the APNU+AFC. It is a coalition between a coalition or partnership, the APNU and an ambitious political party, the AFC.
The APNU is a lopsided political partnership. It is essentially the PNC/R and a few microscopic political parties. It has joined together with the AFC which commands about 10% of the support of the electorate, judging from the results of the 2011 polls. The APNU and the AFC are bound together in a pact which is guided by an agreement, the Cummingsburg Accord, which was so poorly crafted that it ran into early problems and is no longer a template for the effective working together of the APNU and the AFC. The agreement needs to be renegotiated to strengthen the government and to bring some order to what is taking place within the ruling administration.
It should have been anticipated that the coalition government would have been plagued with suspicion even though the parties did team up to frustrate and cripple the Ramotar administration. There was bound to be some level of mistrust and a great deal of awkwardness in working together.
There was also bound to be power vacuums. While the President holds full executive authority under the law, it must be understood that he is checked in his freedom to impose his will, not by the lack of authority but by the need to keep the AFC happy.
The AFC on the other hand has to consider the views of its own constituents even as it tries to be compliant with the principle of democratic centralism which exists within the government. The AFC can break up the government if it pulls out of the government but it is not likely to do so since once you have tasted the sweet of political power you are not prone to want to dispense with it.
The coalition government is facing the same problem that Burnham faced during his administration. Burnham was unprepared to rein in the excesses of his party’s officials for fear that such actions would lend support to the PPP/C. Burnham was obsessed, to the point of paranoia, with overshadowing Jagan. And so he did not move against the corruption and power- drunken actions of his underlings.
This failure, of course, enraged the leader of the United Force who was then the Finance Minister. Differences arose between Burnham and D’Aguiar, over Burnham’s failure to discipline some of his officials. The PNC/UF coalition almost fell apart. It has to take the then top US envoy in the country to prevent a break-up of the coalition.
Burnham eventually dumped the United Force in 1968, rigged the elections and ruled supreme until his death in 1985. But he did face another crisis later in his government, which forced him to appoint his Deputy, Dr. Ptolemy Reid, as the person to whom all Cabinet ministers had to report.
Ironically the Cummingsburg Accord does provide for such an arrangement. It does provide for the Prime Minister to be responsible for all domestic affairs. Logically this should mean that all ministers, except those concerned with defence and foreign affairs, should report to the Prime Minister. But this provision in the Cummingsburg Accord is being honoured in the breach.
It needs to be activated now so as to bring greater order to government and to have someone ensure that the ship of State is steadied.

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