The PPP gambled and lost: It hid its political agenda behind the Constitution

Sep 29, 2019 Features / Columnists, Hinds' Sight with Dr. David Hinds

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This past week, President Granger announced that general and regional elections would be held on March 2, 2020. The initial announcement had left some breathing space for the naysayers to continue their narrative of gloom and doom. The statement appeared to suggest that that date depended on the PPP going to the National Assembly to facilitate the extension of the life of the government.

The PPP and its chorus instantly charged the president with “further delaying the elections” because according to them, he had not named a definitive date. This prompted the Head of State to definitively say the next day that even if the PPP’s does not go to parliament, elections would be held on March 2.
When historians and other analysts look back on the last nine months, one conclusion that should be most apparent is that the PPP gambled and lost. That party had very carefully plotted its way back to power while the Coalition government was asleep. They stunned the Coalition by convincing one of its parliamentarians to join them in the no-confidence vote last December.
They knew that they stood an excellent chance of winning the election which, barring any unforeseen circumstances, would be constitutionally due in three months. They had just won a resounding Local Government victory. Their base was mobilised. But more importantly, they knew the Voters’ List was tainted, but that it would facilitate an easy victory for them.
The PPP also knew full well that the Coalition was in bad shape. Their constituency had just handed them a resounding rebuke by staying away from the polls at the LGE. They were in no position to effectively fight an election in the short run. The Coalition initially accepted the No Confidence Vote (NCV) as a done deal, but quickly changed their minds. They decided to opt for judicial review. In other words, they challenged the validity of the NCV—a right to which they were entitled.
Once the matter went to the court, the constitutional three-month timeline for elections was suspended. The Court of Appeal then overturned the ruling by the High Court that the NCV was properly passed. The PPP opted to appeal to the CCJ—the court of last resort. By the time the CCJ gave its ruling and attendant orders, almost seven months had elapsed.
The point I am making here is that both the government and opposition engaged the court. Therefore, to charge the government with illegally staying in office is highly misleading—the right to review an act of parliament is universally accepted.
Once the court refused to name a date for elections as the PPP had requested, the matter was then thrown into the laps of the political parties. They had the option of arriving at a political decision on the way forward. On the one hand, the Coalition argued that despite the constitutional requirement that elections be held within three months, this must be tied to GECOM’s readiness to hold such elections.
GECOM signaled that it could not be ready in three months. This meant that the coalition opted for a de-facto triggering of Article 6-7, which allowed for a conditional extension of the life of the government, since the PPP would not go to parliament to do so.
GECOM decided to grant the Coalition’s request for House-to-House registration as a means of cleaning the list, essentially closing the door on election within the stipulated three-months timeline. This decision also removed the rug from under the PPP’s feet. That party had premised its strategy on ensuring that the old list was used for the election. In other words, the staunch argument in favour of holding elections within three months was less about the timeline and more about ensuring that the list was not sanitised.
This thinking drove the PPP back to the court to stop the House-to-House (HtH) registration. The court refused to grant the request by ruling that the exercise was legal. The PPP now had to make a crucial decision—should it agree to a political decision to hold elections by the end of the year or should it continue to argue for elections by September. It chose the latter and the rest is history.
The new GECOM chair eventually stopped the HtH registration, but crucially decided to merge the collected data with the existing list. This meant the PPP’s bid to use the old list was defeated. It also meant that practically, elections would now be pushed to next year.
In the end the PPP gambled and lost. Instead of seeking consensus, it opted for strict constitutionalism. It constructed a constitutional crisis and unsuccessfully sought to get the courts entangled. It got the ABE countries to threaten the government with sanctions, but by then it was too late.
All the president had to do was to name an election date which he duly did. There will be no sanctions because the ABE countries asked for an election date to be named. The elections would be held with a new or mostly new list. The Coalition ends up losing just two months of their full term. Once a de-facto date was named, the PPP’s agreement to an extension of the government’s life is a moot point. The government will remain in office out of necessity. The PPP has to stop its protest which assumed the government is illegal. Once a date is named, the government becomes legal again by the PPP’s yardstick.
The PPP outsmarted itself. It played smart without being clever. If it really wanted election at the earliest opportunity, it could have negotiated a November-December election. But it was never essentially about a timeline; it was about a timeline that would have prevented a sanitised list. It fooled its supporters and ended up fooling itself. It was never about constitutional principle.
I think some advocates and commentators honestly believed it was a matter of the rule of law and constitutional adherence. But they had to know that that was not the PPP’s intention. They hid their political agenda behind the constitution.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper)
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]

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