H@rd Truths by GHK Lall – PNC in DC: a recipe for impotency

Oct 12, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – The atmospherics are gradually easing on the recent PNC visit to Washington, DC to meet with some members of the US House of Representatives. As thrusts and counters quiet down, it is now timely to look at this visit (‘response to an invitation’) one last time, and state where I stand.  In proceeding, I exhort that there is one essential component that must be borne in mind: when all the acoustics, acrobatics, antics, and optics are done, this is about politics, nothing but politics to the core.

Politics is a game that is decided by numbers: those who have the most numbers win.  Usually.  When all the quarreling and squabbling is over, to get the bigger number is the beginning and end of politics, the visions of its practitioners, the ambitions of its hopefuls. Whatever follows after that in a government, in a cabinet, in a parliament, hinges on scaling that first and last hurdle, viz-a-viz., getting the highest tally of numbers.  This applies all over, be it Guyana or elsewhere.

With that put to bed, there is this reality for the PNC to face: it does not have the numbers to carry a national election.  The group can talk all it wants about the impacts of emigration, the differentials in demographics due to possible family planning, the disgruntlements in the support base of competing groups [of which there is only one], and so forth.  But, taken individually or together, the bottom line is that the PNC by itself, or in association with others, does not have the numbers to win an election.  No Guyanese needs to be at the GECOM, or manning the Bureau of Statistics, to know this, and to come to this conclusion.  Accordingly, the PNC needs every vote that it can get, and none as much as it does the fence-sitters, the undecideds, the troubled, and the angry.  In a teaspoon, any and all crossover votes are needed, would be worth their weight in rare earth.

With that said, I return to the scene of the conference, which has now been made into one that is a crime by the PPP Government, and its cohorts of marvelous and well taken care of operators.  Guyanese watch local TV (except me), and listen to political leaders (except me), so they get their fill of what was in DC, and who should not have been.  More specifically, it is of whom the PNC should have been sensible enough to give a careful berth, one with plenty of cushion built into it.  More bluntly, for the PNC to be seen, to be near, to be too close to some of the brethren risks sending the wrong signals, leading to kisses plastered on its cheeks.  It would not be the kiss of political life, as in electoral victory.  The reality, as heavy and harsh as it is, must be confronted: the potential number of crossover voters could lose their interest and leanings, which is always fickle to begin with; and they are mainly from one segment of the demographic, the electoral heat map.

One man’s likely loss, as feared, could be the other man’s gain, as long as the latter doesn’t inflict pain on himself.  The latter is where the leadership of the PNC, as piloted by Mr. Aubrey Norton, finds itself.  All things considered, I conclude that Mr. Norton did himself and his side an injustice.  The visit to Washington, DC, and the circumstances in which it came about were not the most opportune for the PNC, nor among the better decisions made by the group. In terms of feared vote loss, I point to the PPP superheavyweight, VP Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, and his recent rages, which are not random, but of someone driven to the brink of the pathologically macabre, the politically depraved. The [former] national leader is not known to be a boozer, yet he has degraded into this brawler. From abuser to aggressor to archer of a dim, deplorable, and disappointing kind, name it and brother Jagdeo has traveled that road of no return. The more volatile and hostile he gets, the more his people shake their heads in dismay at what oil has done to him.

In all this, there is one word that hangs in the air, and it begins with that now dreadful letter in the alphabet, an ‘r.’  Race has been the leprosy and cancer about which we are comfortable doing little about, and facing still less.  It is about how people can be correctly interpreted or, perhaps, unfairly misinterpreted.  Regardless of who is what, and which is which, the PNC does not have any margin of safety for it to experiment with these types of sojourns and associations.  There are other ways to obtain the best out of these relationships and situations, which all political parties have, as a matter of routine, part of their militant wing.

I close this out now.  Nothing written here today is about neurosurgery or has anything to do with differential equations.  Rather, it is about the political environment in which Guyanese have always lived.  Most Guyanese know this.  The PNC knows this, which is why it should not do anything, nor be around any development, that causes it to self-destruct.  Remember what the algorithms say: it’s all in the numbers, and who has most of them. Quite clearly, therefore, it had to be NO! to Washington, DC.

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

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• DC, PNC, Politics, US House of Representatives, Washington

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