“Riggers keep out”!

Feb 28, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Is the PNC/R grovelling at the feet of the PPP/C? It sure does appear as if the second largest political party in Guyana is begging for invitations to public events. First the International Energy Conference and second, the 52nd Republic anniversary flag-raising ceremony.
But why is the PNC/R so keen to be part of such events? Surely, an invitation to either is not suggestive of any meaningful form of participation in government.
The International Energy Conference was not about charting any national oil strategy or about how the resources from that sector will be apportioned. The conference was primarily about bringing investors together to examine opportunities.
Attendance at the flag-raising ceremony could hardly have given expression to establishing a functioning democracy. The PNC/R should be the last to be touting the need for a functioning democracy. It attempted to benefit from rigged elections in 2020. Its objective was not about ensuring a functional democracy; it was attempting to thwart democracy.
The idea of a functioning democracy is counterpoised to the notion of parliamentary democracy. A functional democracy also is less about sharing of power between the government and the opposition and more about creating a plural model of democracy which involves decision-making by a wide range of societal actors. Instead of focusing on the traditional actors – the representative parties in the National Assembly, a plural model, suggests a role for other actors, such as civil society, business and workers in decision-making regarding public affairs.
While the recent USAID report speaks to the need for the country’s two main political parties to move away from the winner-take-all model, this should not be viewed as an endorsement of executive power sharing. The report, at no point, suggests or recommends a model in which the two main political groupings, the PNC/R and the PPP/C, should share executive power.
In fact, the authors of the USAID report are no fans of a two-party sharing of power. The report is aimed at pushing for a plural model of democracy similar to what America pretends it has and which is supposed to ascribe a role to groups in the society such as women, youth, LGBTQI and the indigenous community.
Everyone in Guyana knows that local civil society is weak. The PNC/R believes that the Private Sector Commission, the main representative private sector body, is biased towards the government. Workers’ organisations have been consumed by the country’s political divide and there is a heated political contest for control of our indigenous populations. Yet, the report ludicrously states that there is a glimmer of hope that Guyana’s two-party system is giving way to a pluralistic society.
The PNC/R, however, has latched on to this report because it has misinterpreted the report as suggesting a need for executive power sharing. The party has therefore sought to point out that even at the most basic level the PPP/C is ill-prepared to accommodate the PNC/R. It is for this reason that the PNC/R is making noises about not being invited to the International Energy Conference and flag-raising ceremony.
But why should the PNC/R have been invited to the flag-raising ceremony? To risk them making themselves nuisances as was done with the ruckus in the National Assembly? The PNC/R was not entitled or should not have expected to have been invited to a state-organised event to mark the 52nd anniversary of the Republic. This was not a special Republic anniversary such as the one which was hosted under the APNU+AFC government in 2016.
The then PPP/C Opposition was invited to that special ceremony. The PPP/C delegation opted to hire a special bus so as to arrive as a group to the event. They turned up to the designated VIP section where seats were supposed to be reserved for them, only to be humiliated by not being seated and being forced to stand along the corridor. As such they took their leave.
It is not protocol to invite Opposition parliamentarians to state events. But it is certainly expected that at certain special events, an invitation would be extended to the Leader of the Opposition.
However, at present there is no Leader of the Opposition. So how can the government extend an invitation to an office which is vacant?
Nor can the non-invitation be seen as, in any way, contradiction to the President’s plug for a One Guyana. Non-democratic forces should have no role in this process. “Riggers keep out”!
In any case, the President of Guyana has already indicated that the One Guyana process is a bottom-up, not a top-down process. As he said, it starts with and is about the people. Those who are therefore suggesting that the non-invite of the PNC/R, to both the International Energy Conference and the 52nd Republic anniversary flag-raising ceremony, is at odds with the One Guyana concept have not taken the time to appreciate that this is a process which does not start or end at the level of the political parties.
(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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