The mysteries of the PNC’s 2015 power that need to be known

Oct 25, 2020 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – I don’t know if it is correct to say that the dust has been settled on the five-month old election drama. But time is going and as we look back at the five years of power of the PNC separately from the AFC, curious questions take on a mysterious air and must be researched by intellectuals who supported the rigging and who are not mentally comfortable with the PNC being out of power.
There are no inexplicabilities about the five years of the AFC. It got power in 2015, shredded its multi-racial and democratic glow and simply swam in a sea of power intoxication. The five years are over, the AFC is over. The inexplicabilities are to be found in the PNC. Why did it not journey on to fertile pastures that were so obvious?
Simply for the purpose of academic knowledge, this country should be given the theories and viewpoints of PNC intellectuals who have it within them to explain why these pathways were not chosen. A clarification is in order. This analysis here is not about the election defeat of the PNC in 2020. It is a one-dimensional argument. It wants to know why the PNC did not go into certain directions that as a matter of exigency it should have gone. I will delineate those lines below. But first, David Hinds.
The biggest surprise for me in the support of the rigged election came from Dr. Hinds. From the time APNU+AFC won the poll in May 2015, Dr. David and I spent five years dissecting the performance of the APNU+AFC. Days after the March 4 fiasco with Mingo, Dr. Hinds spent hours with me on my verandah drinking Banks DIH shandy as we looked back on the five years of power by the PNC.
Why was I bamboozled at how Dr. Hinds turned out? Because in those five years of discussions with me, we both could have seen that roads not taken would cost APNU+AFC. Dr. Hinds was into Rodneyite politics when he assessed the performance of APNU+AFC as the months and years went by. It was not long into the rule of the APNU+AFC that Dr. Hinds ran into trouble with the AFC over his Rodneyite criticism of the government’s errors. The AFC was abusive to him. He responded by accusing them of being power drunk.
Of all the people in the world, Dr. Hinds knew that APNU+AFC by not meeting the expectations of the people that caused them to win in 2015. But sadly and tragically, when it dawned on him that APNU+AFC lost, he defected from the politics of Walter Rodney and succumbed to Kafkaesque instincts of race.
Let us leave out any discussion of the post 2015 performance. I honestly believe that Guyanese wherever they are would like scholarly answers in relation to certain mysteries of the PNC from 2015 to 2020. Here are some. What was the essential reason for backing down on a policy that African Guyanese was eagerly looking forward to – the amendment of the severe penalties in the anti-marijuana legislation? Wasn’t it a win-win situation for the PNC had it become law?
When it came to power in 2015, the PNC, after being in governmental exile since 1992, found some beneficial policies for African Guyanese that were born after 1968 were removed by successive PPP presidents, one of which was the abolition of duty free cars to UG lecturers and certain categories of public servants. The PNC had five years to reinstitute the policy. Why it did not?
The PNC had five years to directly confront a travesty that specifically relates to African Guyanese – wages and salaries in the civil service and public sector. In its five years, the PNC got into conflict with teachers that almost came close to industrial relation. It demitted office in 2020 and there was never any substantial increase for these categories of employees. President Jagan, early in his presidency, awarded a fifty percent increase to all UG employees.
The government birthed a public service commission of inquiry headed by one of Guyana’s prominent professors, Harold Lutchman. The elevation of retirement age was one of the recommendations. It never happened. The government birthed a lands commission to look into ancestral lands that belong to African Guyanese. Its recommendations were left unattended. Both unions at UG are predominantly African in leadership. Yet industrial relations broke down and the government chose the side of the Vice-Chancellor. The scrapping of the importation of used tyres and the cruel increase in licence for animal-drawn vehicles hit African Guyanese harder than Indians. Why a government whose raison d’être rested on African Guyanese support went into self-destructive mode?

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

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