The Coronation is set for May

Jan 14, 2024 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – The PPP Congress will be held, finally, in May of this year. The Congress should have been held since 2019, before the onset of the pandemic. The failure to hold the Congress, as per due date, demonstrates the stranglehold that the Executive Committee has on the party.

That stranglehold will have to be moderated by Congress. The postponement of Congress cannot be left simply to the Executive Committee or to the Central Committee and it is for the delegates to the Congress to remind the leadership of the party that the Congress is the highest-decision making organ of the party and cannot be made subordinate to the decision of either the Executive Committee or the Central Committee.

In 1968, Cheddi Jagan sounded a warning to the party. He warned against deviations to both the left and the right. Since his demise and that of his wife, the party has swung totally to the right. This has been no deviation; it has been an about-turn. In the process the party has ditched the working class orientation upon which it was established and which it has consistently championed.

In his address to the 15^th Congress of the party, Jagan had called for a more ideologically sound and well-disciplined party and would be armed with the ideology, theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism.

For all of Jagan’s efforts to instill socialist values and virtues within the party, no sooner had the PPP won power in 1992, there was a mad rush at self- enrichment by many within the leadership of the party.

The corruption contaminated the party. And this led to the ultimate apogee of the party ditching Marxism-Leninism. The references have remained but have been rendered ineffectual by the alignment of the party with the bourgeois class, its pursuit of neo-liberal policies and its open embrace of imperialism.

The failure of the party to adopt a stronger position in relation to Israel’s aggression against Palestine is a direct reflection of its ideological shift from left to the right. And this shift that party informs Venezuela’s recent acts of aggression against Guyana. The PPP is no longer seen as a leftist party and is perceived in Caracas as a tool of US imperialism.

However, there is not much chance of the party returning to its ideological roots. Being on the left no longer implies embracing Marxism-Leninism. Lula of Brazil is still considered as leftist but he is not Marxist-Leninist.

The PPPC however is firmly in the bourgeois and imperialist camp. The local bourgeois class is most likely to bankroll the Congress of the party and they would prefer to hear the usual cuss-out of the PNC than any serious discussion of the ideology of the party.

The old guard was supposed to be the wardens of the party’s ideological roots. But their numbers have been depleted by age and death.  The old guard of the party no longer has the numbers or the moral authority to question the extant ideological disposition of the PPP. The old guard in fact can be said to have complicit in the party’s about-turn to the right.

There was a period when the party seemed ideologically sterile. But that stage has long passed. The party is now entrenched within the local bourgeois class – the wealth that some of its modern leaders possess is simply mind-boggling. The party is also now in bed with US imperialism and this is why has refused to renegotiate the oil contract. This is also why imperialism is keen on inflaming tensions between Guyana and Venezuela.

The Congress will have the unenviable task of either rubber-stamping the present alliances of the party or having someone brave enough stand up and denounce what is taking place within the party and the government. That person will have to be prepared to be ostracized from the party. But who will that person be?  No candidates seem in sight.

The May 2024 Congress will thus likely see the delegates being silent on the ideological thrust of the party while shamelessly proclaiming that the PPP remains a party of the working class. They will do so while eating the free lunches being provided by the powerful bourgeois class.

The Congress is also likely to witness the virtual coronation of Bharrat Jagdeo as the supreme emperor of the party. His grip on the party will remain unchallenged, solidifying his position as its undisputed leader. And with that coronation will see the extinguishing of any hopes of the PPPC returning to its ideological roots.

(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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• Congress, Executive Committee, Peeping Tom, postponement, PPP

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