The AFC is comfortable being a utensil of the PNCR

Jan 29, 2019 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The Cummingsburg Accord was fatally flawed. It was an agreement which was mainly intended to remove the PPPC from office and not one intended to promoted consensus within government.
The APNU, using the 2011 elections as a benchmark, knew that it could not by itself win the presidency. Under Guyana’s elections laws, the party or grouping with the plurality wins the presidency.
At the 2011 general elections, the PPPC secured 48.6% of the total votes cast; the APNU 40.81% of the votes at the 2011 elections; and the AFC 10.23%. Though a minority in the National Assembly, the PPPC won the presidency.
The APNU needed the AFC to boot the presidency away from the PPPC. Without the AFC, the APNU would have continued on the opposition benches.
The two groupings, the APNU and the AFC, decided to come together to contest the 2015 elections as a coalition. Within the 2011 parliament, the two sides frustrated and in cases curtailed the PPPC’s ability to govern. The two seized control of critical committees in the National Assembly and even tried to silence a PPP Minister within the Assembly.
The decision to form a pre-election coalition to contest the 2015 elections came at a late hour, a mere three months before the May 2015 elections. It was a hurried arrangement and its focus was mainly about removing the PPPC from government.
The agreement was centered on the division of spoils – how Cabinet, parliamentary seats and ministries were to be split and who would Chair Cabinet. These were intended to give comfort to the AFC supporters so that they would not fear that their party would be marginalized by the larger APNU.
The reality for the AFC turned out to be different. The AFC has become a footstool of the APNU.
The missing element of the Agreement was how decisions were going to be made. The agreement was silent on how the Executive presidency with its enormous powers would be tamed and how decisions would be made within Cabinet.
Under the Constitution, all executive authority rests with the President. Cabinet is just a deliberative body which is collectively responsible to the National Assembly. The President therefore can use his or her executive.
Some persons were reportedly identified for senior appointments within government without prior discussion with the APNU. The portfolios of the Prime Minister, the Minister of Public Security and the Minister of Natural Resources suffered diminution and there was nothing in the Cummingsburg Accord which could reverse this.
And even after the passage of the no-confidence motion there were reports of high-level meetings which excluded the AFC leaders within the Cabinet.
The AFC has found itself shacked by Cabinet. AFC Ministers are bound by the principle of collective responsibility within Cabinet. It means that these AFC Ministers – some of whom have railed against the almost identical principle of democratic centralism – have to go along with decisions of Cabinet.
The AFC is outnumbered within Cabinet and therefore has been forced to go along with the majority. The APNU has the majority and therefore has used this to sideline the AFC.
The Cummingsburg Accord has not prevented the AFC from being dominated within the government. As such, coalition politics has been lopsided.
It is surprising therefore that the AFC would still today be arguing for a retention, rather than a renegotiation of the Cummingsburg Accord. If the AFC was serious about consensus politics it would insist that executive authority should take account of consensus within Cabinet and that decisions of Cabinet be arrived at only by special majorities.
This would allow the AFC a greater say in the running of the country.
The AFC is electorally weaker than the PNCR. But without the AFC, the PNCR will be locked out of power. The AFC therefore should not be negotiating from a position of weakness. It should not cheapen the value it brings to the coalition.
But that is exactly what it is doing by refusing to call for a major overhaul of the Cummings Accord. The AFC now seems comfortable with the perquisites of power rather than the principles which should guide the use of that power.
What the AFC has failed to realize is that as far as the PNCR is concerned, the Cummingsburg Accord is dead and buried. The AFC will have to be part of any APNU coalition on PNCR’s terms. It will therefore continue to be reduced to a utensil of the PNCR once the coalition returns to office by whatever means it does so.

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The AFC is comfortable being a utensil of the PNCR

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