The Govt. has fallen: The leaders have only themselves to blame

Dec 23, 2018 Features / Columnists, Hinds' Sight with Dr. David Hinds

The APNU+AFC Coalition Government has fallen. At a personal level, I am disappointed that the government that I helped to bring to power, that I sacrificed for, that I voted for, that I supported, was not given the opportunity to finish its full term.
Like a few others, I had been an early victim of this government—marginalized from participation by the orders of the high and mighty, only because I dared to say the government was wrong. But that did not prevent me from continuing to support the Coalition– for me, politics is never about the individual actor only. Ultimately, it is about something bigger than the individual.
It took a lot to stomach the marginalization, largely because most of the people who controlled the power never fought for it, Power fell into their laps, and their first victims were those who helped to create the conditions for them to wield power.
When some of us fought back against the PPP, many in the AFC were still PPP, while others were comfortable professionals who would not even go near to a picket line. Many in the PNC had surrendered. Others were violently opposed to the formation of APNU. Still others were nowhere near protests. But as soon as we handed them the instruments of power, they went crazy, and in three short years, they destroyed it all.
So, I am not surprised that the government fell the way it did. I don’t blame Charrandass Persaud, although I would not have voted the way he did. He expressed the frustrations many of us felt, both at the personal and political levels.
I watch from close-up the disrespect meted out to small parties. My party, the WPA felt the full force of it. They closed down APNU to deny us a voice in decision-making. They shoved us around. They ignored us. They fired our representative from his post of Minister of Education. They then took advantage of his illness to block another WPA member from serving in Cabinet.
The feeling of marginalization that Charrandass expressed is all too well-known to some of us. This government had great disdain for consultation. The AFC leadership went along with it. That party’s top leadership abandoned its independent voice and chose power over principle. They failed to listen to their own independent voices from within. They forced Nigel Hughes away, because he dared to ask them to be more independent. In the end, that neglect of their expressed promise to be independent brought the government down.
Readers of this column, and my other media comments, would know that I constantly complained about the nonsense that small parties brought nothing to the table and so their marginalization was justified. I complained about the Coalition being transformed into a PNC front. But they cared not about the consequences. In the end, it was one member of a small party that brought the government down.
They told the country how the coalition was strong, but they knew full well that that was not the case. It took Jagdeo’s no-confidence motion and Persaud’s vote of dissent to expose the lie. The truth is that the top leadership managed intra-coalition relations very badly.
It is now acknowledged among politically sane and honest observers that the PPP has done something remarkable—it has turned the political tide in its favour. No political party in our Caribbean has been able to “get itself out of jail” in such a short period.
The case against the PPP for government overreach, ethnic domination and corruption was so compelling, it helped to lure some of its traditional supporters into voting for a coalition of parties, including its archenemy, the PNC. It was the PPP that was fighting for its life in 2015. Now a mere three years later, the victors in the mini-revolution of 2015 have lost power.
So, can the Coalition win the election next year? This will be the defining question until election day. For me, from this vantage point, the Coalition with the current mindset would have a most difficult time accomplishing that task. A Coalition that wants to run on demonizing Jagdeo and on memory of the bad PPP days will only get so far. The PNC’s base would no doubt be excited by such a thrust, but that base alone cannot carry the Coalition to victory.
So, I would suggest from now on that mindless demonization of the PPP and Jagdeo should not be central to the Coalition’s message. It represents nothing beyond empty rhetoric to excite the base—it does not attract many votes outside of the base. It is not that the PPP and the country should not be reminded of what that party did when in office—they must be reminded. But if that is all the Coalition must run on, or if that is at the centre of the message, then they are in very bad shape.
I was mildly encouraged by the Coalition’s statement on the eve of the no-confidence vote. The statement mentioned in passing “missteps and challenges” and went on to enumerate the accomplishments of the government. I was less impressed with the list of accomplishments, which I view as routine stuff that all governments are expected to do. The question, which the statement did not answer, is this—how have those things translated into raising the quality of life of the various publics? You win elections with messages that appeal to people’s deep sense of transformation—how have their individual and collective lives been politically, economically or culturally transformed. In other words, I am saying the Coalition must find a transformative message that is based on truth and reality.
That is why I like the “missteps and challenges” part of the statement. Any effective Coalition message for the election must start with an acknowledgement of the mistakes that were made. And such acknowledgement must be grounded in humility, and it must accept responsibility. Not the Volda Lawrence type of apology, but one with a respectful and thoughtful ring to it. But that must be followed by a believable promise not to repeat the mistakes.
In this regard, I think there is need for some freshness at the centre of the Coalition collective to inspire fresh hope. Whatever happens at the head of the Coalition’s ticket in three months, there must be a more active role for Carl Greenidge. He has the profile and the intellectual grasp to help manage an oil and gas economy, and to help restore confidence in the Coalition to craft a transformative trajectory in the near and medium terms. He is one of the few Ministers to have escaped the mess that has enveloped the Coalition. If he is moved from the shadows to the centre of Coalition decision-making, it could re-inspire confidence among independents of all ethnic groups.

More of Dr. Hinds’ writings and commentaries can be found on his YouTube Channel Hinds’ Sight: Dr. David Hinds’ Guyana-Caribbean Politics and on his website www.guyanacaribbeanpolitics.news. Send comments to [email protected]