The paper tiger

Jul 06, 2019 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The Working People’s Alliance (WPA) is willing to bend over backwards in order to retain a place in the ruling coalition. Even though the WPA has been marginalized and humiliated within the coalition, it is still desperate to grovel at the feet of the PNCR and the AFC so as to devour the scraps of political spoils which is being thrown its way.
The WPA is now pledging unconditional support for the coalition. It is asking its supporters to vote for the coalition even if it is unhappy with any of the parties which form the coalition. This is a naked appeal to a form of solidarity that is in contradistinction to everything that Walter Rodney stood for which the WPA fought for right up to the 2015.
The WPA says that it will fight for cash-transfers from the oil revenues. This is what it is offering its supporters: vote for us and we will fight to ensure that cash transfers are made to every Guyanese.
Gone is the position that these cash transfers should be only for the poor. Every citizen is now being told that each should be receiving a cheque each month from the government.
Gone too is the demand for an apology from the coalition. The WPA has done a political somersault.
The new position of the WPA is to tell its supporters even if they do not like what the WPA is doing, vote for the AFC; and if they do not like what the AFC is doing, vote for the PNCR; and if they do not like what the PNCR is doing vote for the WPA. In other words, vote for the coalition regardless of if you have problems with any of the parties which constitute the coalition.
What the WPA is not saying is what happens if someone has problems with what all the parties in the coalition are doing. Who then should that person vote for?
This new WPA is decadent. It is appealing to a certain kind of loyalty.
Taken to its logical extension, what the WPA wants its supporters to do is not to blame the government for its mistakes but to blame the parties. And then to say to these supporters that notwithstanding that blame to still vote for the coalition.
In other words, it is saying that the vote in the forthcoming election should be against the PPPC regardless of how one feels about the coalition.
Absent from the WPA position is the insistence made by one of its leaders- who said that he was at the time speaking in his personal capacity – that the coalition should apologize to its supporters. He did not state at the time that the PNCR should apologize; or that the WPA or the AFC should apologize.
He said that the coalition should apologize to its supporters for betraying their trust and not fulfilling the promises made in its manifesto. Mouth change!
Gone is the insistence that the coalition should look at its supporters in the face and admit that it has messed up. If this has not happened, how can one ask supporters to reelect a coalition which has messed up and which has not apologized.
Gone too is the contention that coalition was not being properly managed and that not all the parties felt a sense of ownership of the coalition. Gone too is the complaint of some of the parties being left out of the decision-making process which it was contended was controlled by a clique.
The WPA asks for support so that it can fight like a tiger. But what kind of tiger? A paper tiger?
The WPA is a toothless and clawless tiger. Why does it expect anyone to believe that it can fight like a tiger when it could not prevent one of its leaders from being humiliated within the government when he was unceremoniously dispatched from the Ministry of Education to desk duties in Department of the Public Service?
Why does it expect anyone to believe that it can fight like a tiger when after being promised the resignation of that Minister from the government, the PNCR was able to convince the same person not to stay on as a Minister?
The WPA has no growl. However, it is prepared to grovel.
Martin Carter said, “The mouth is muzzled by the hand that feeds it.”

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