The PPP is a pro-people party that is not race-based

Nov 23, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,
The current APNU-AFC administration seems to be pack pedaling on a major manifesto promise which was to put in train the necessary mechanisms to allow for constitutional reforms. This from all appearances is now put on the back burner and there is now a deafening silence on this important facet of national life.
The Granger-Nagamoottoo administration owes an explanation to the Guyanese people why there is now a marked reluctance to commence the process of constitutional reforms aimed at a more inclusive and participatory governance mechanism. There were even talks of shared governance with the political opposition should the APNU win the elections.
Now that the APNU-AFC has been catapulted into the seat of government, all talks of shared governance have been thrown out of the window. With a slender one seat majority in Parliament, the current regime is behaving as if they have a divine right to rule. It matters very little if at all, that the PPP still remains the single largest political party in Guyana and still has control over seven of the ten administrative regions in the country. Indeed, it is something of an enigma that the PPP/C controls some 70 percent of the Regional Democratic Councils and still occupy the opposition benches. Nor does it matter that the PPP has challenged the results of the elections in court. One reason for the PPP electoral victories was the fact that the PPP since its very entry into competitive electoral politics was always voter friendly due mainly to its popular and universalistic appeal. Its embrace of pro-people programs and policies has rendered it a national institution which transcends the narrow confines of race and ethnicity.
It is not the fault of the PPP that it continues to win all elections either outright or by way of winning a plurality. Interestingly, all attempts at constitutional reforms since the colonial period were aimed primarily at preventing the PPP from winning an outright majority. This started way back in the 1957 when the electoral boundaries or constituencies were reduced from twenty four to fourteen to reduce the perceived electoral advantage it was felt the PPP enjoyed in the 1953 elections when it won a political landslide of eighteen out of twenty four seats. Despite the political gerrymandering and manipulation of the electoral system, the PPP under the charismatic leadership of Dr. Cheddi Jagan still managed to win nine out of the fourteen seats. It will be recalled that two years earlier, in 1955 a major split took placed in the party.
One distinct advantage of the constituency model is that it allows for greater accountability of political stewardship at the constituency level and also more predictable and stable government. The current model which is basically a hybrid of the constituency and PR, needs to be revisited with a view to deepening the democratic and by extension governance mechanisms thereby allowing for more representative and accountable governance. The current administration needed as a matter of urgency to re-convene the Constitutional Reform Commission to come up with new and innovative thinking on how to deepen and broaden our democracy which is currently fragile and amorphous.
Hydar Ally

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