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APNU-AFC mistakes played a big part in the biology of the PPP’s congress

Dec 22, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Mrs. Hilary Clinton has gone on record as officially saying that the FBI Head contributed to her electoral loss. He released a letter to Congress just before the elections, saying that there are more e-mails from Mrs. Clinton that had to be analyzed for violations of the law.
She said, “…Our analysis is that Comey’s letter raising doubts … stopped our momentum.” What the letter did, it caused voters to reflect on the trustworthiness of Clinton. Trust is a huge factor in voting for a candidate. People do not give their ballots to men and women they don’t trust.
Politics is a relentless zero sum game in which the wolf is always at the gate and you have to always chase him away. The APNU-AFC Coalition would not attract the envy of any politician anywhere in the world. It came to power after 15 years of insane Jagdeo/Ramotar politics. The work to undo what the PPP has done to this country from 2001 to 2015 is frightening and daunting. How do you remove from strategic niches, PPP supporters put there by Messrs. Jagdeo and Ramotar without strengthening the PPP’s ties to its constituencies when they give off cries of witch-hunt?
How the Government could have retained someone like Khurshid Sattaur? If I was the Minister of Finance, as soon as I was sworn in, before the ink could have dried on the document, I would have dismissed Sattaur. The new government has inherited hundreds like Sattaur. Political appointees during the PPP tenure are refusing to resign. You touch them, Jagdeo goes to Port Mourant, cries ethnic cleaning, and PPP supporters are energized. What can you do?
The PPP is a ruthless machine. You don’t play into its hands. The Coalition has been doing that daily. One of the essential strategies for countering the PPP was to demonstrate an alternative political culture. The APNU/AFC has not done that even in small doses. This lack of a transformative culture is causing serious hemorrhaging in the PNC’s constituencies. The AFC has lost its place among rural Indians.
There was still hope for the Coalition even if it demonstrated that it was just another ordinary government. But it did worse than that. It made egregious mistakes that had depraved dimensions. The PPP began to jump so high with joy that Jagdeo actually caught some stars.
Supporters of the Coalition Government should not fool themselves; the terrible behaviour of the Coalition Government has fuelled a sarcastic but galvanizing demagoguery of the PPP and it is persuading the PPP supporters and Indian Guyanese who did not vote for the PPP. The PPP is milking the atrocities of the ruling partnership and it showed up in the extensive exuberance seen at the PPP congress over the weekend. What is taking place in Guyana is identical to the FBI letter.
Just try to imagine what that letter did. Trump is on the back foot, Clinton is way ahead. Then the FBI tells the American people that it found more private e-mails from Mrs. Clinton and they have to check it to see if she broke the secrecy laws of the country. For many voters, the alternative to such a candidate was Trump.
It is the same scenario playing out here. The PPP leadership goes to Indian enclaves and says with deadly persuasion that it was hounded down for acts of corruption by the PNC and AFC when they were in opposition but look at the bond scandal, Harmon China trip, the Durban Park fiasco.
The PPP goes to Essequibo and Berbice and says that when in government they were accused of giving perks to their leaders but look the whopping sums some Ministers are getting for scholarships, the money they are giving to Hamilton Green, the stupendous salary increase they gave themselves weeks after they came to power.
Perhaps the blow below the belt that has floored the Coalition is VAT on electricity. Surely VAT on anything will never generate the anger in citizens as VAT on electricity. And why? Because blackout is part of life in Guyana. As an aside let me say since that announcement, blackout is in a Draculean mood where I live.
If we had predicted that Jagdeo, Ramotar and the rest of the venal PPP army would have faded away after 2015, we were humiliatingly wrong. When the song book of Coalition wrong-doings was read out at that congress, euphoria swept the audience like a tsunami. PPP leadership knew they were reborn, reborn to take back power. I hope that never happens but it could.

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