The Self-Defeating Nature of the PNCR

Apr 08, 2024 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – The People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) of Guyana has a propensity to sabotage its own chances at success. Despite winning the 2015 general and regional elections, the PNCR’s fundamental flaw lies in its defeatist mentality.

When it comes to elections, the PNCR has for too long operated based on a self-defeating mentality. It has historically adopted a preconceived notion about elections and the inevitability of the party’s defeat in free and fair polls. This psychological approach to elections ensures the PNCR’s own electoral failures. The now predicable outcomes of its performance at elections, however, are of its own making.

Central to the PNCR’s electoral strategy is a narrative of perpetual victimhood and a belief that it cannot win a free and fair election in Guyana. This defeatist mindset, an inheritance from Burnham, is deeply ingrained within the party’s ethos. It is perpetuated by a leadership unwilling to confront its own shortcomings. By adopting this defeatist stance, the PNCR absolves itself of responsibility for electoral defeats, attributing losses to alleged rigging by its opponents. However, this narrative insults the intelligence of its supporters. One of the PNCR’s most damaging tendencies is its predilection for fabricating excuses and spreading misinformation even before Election Day. Rather than focusing on winning support, the party expends its energy on sowing seeds of doubt and suspicion over the electoral process.

For instance, the PNCR has resorted to baseless claims of voter fraud.  In more recent memory, it alleged the registration of foreign nationals like Chinese and Venezuelans. It has never provided any substantive evidence of this and it cannot. These tactics not only erode trust in the electoral process but also reveal a party that is morally bankrupt. The PNCR’s insistence on clinging to outdated grievances and conspiracy theories further alienates potential supporters and thus hampers its electoral prospects. Instead of embracing demographic shifts and diversifying its appeal, the party remains fixated on divisive rhetoric and ethnic calculations.

Guyana’s demographics have evolved. It has done so in favour of the PNCR. Persons of mixed ancestry now comprising almost 20% of the population. Indians, long the bastion of support for the PPPC, are now a minority. The electoral system has also changed to the PNCR’s favour, making it possible for governments to have razor-slim majorities in the National Assembly.

The PNCR remains trapped in a narrow-minded worldview and a defeatist mentality. You cannot win an election when making excuses assumes greater priority than winning crossover votes. The PNCR’s defeatist mentality has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It perpetuates a cycle of electoral failure. By convincing itself of its own inevitable defeat, the party undermines its own morale and organizational efficacy. This defeatism becomes a contagious virus infecting party members and supporters alike, sapping enthusiasm and diminishing turnout. In essence, the PNCR becomes its own worst enemy, sabotaging its electoral prospects.

The irony of the PNCR’s predicament lies in the fact that its electoral success in 2015, hailed as a triumph over the incumbent People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC), has become an aberration rather than a harbinger of sustained dominance. Instead of building upon this victory and consolidating its support base, the PNCR has squandered its political capital through self-sabotage.

To break free from this cycle of electoral failure, the PNCR must undergo a fundamental re-evaluation of its approach to politics. Firstly, it has to abandon its defeatist mindset that that has shackled the party to failure. Rather than resorting to conspiracy theories and ethnic fearmongering, the PNCR should focus on articulating a compelling and democratic vision for Guyana’s progress and engaging with voters on issues that resonate across ethnic lines.

Second the PNCR must prioritise internal reform. Because it tried to benefit from rigged elections in 2020 and because this happened in front of the whole world, the PNCR has become a discredited entity. The party has lost support even though it still maintains much of its support base. The forthcoming Congress of the party is an opportunity for the membership to undertake sweeping changes within the party by removing from its leadership all those persons who were part of the discredited narrative that the 2020 elections were rigged. The PNCR must become a democratic party. Unfortunately, it cannot do so unless its purges its leadership of all those who perpetuated discredited narratives.

The forthcoming Congress of the party must accept the fact that the PNCR’s electoral failures are not the result of external machinations or insurmountable odds but rather the product of its own self-defeating mentality. Until the party sheds its defeatist mindset and embraces a more proactive and inclusive approach to politics, it will continue to languish in the shadows of its own making.

The path to electoral success lies in dispensing with scapegoating or in conspiracy theories. Only then can the PNCR transcend its current state of electoral irrelevance. But whether the PNCR can diss its past is left to be seen. A leopard never loses its stripes and the PNCR appears to behave, impulsively, as if free and fair elections are a curse.

(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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• Guyana, People’s Progressive Party Civic, PNCR’s, The People’s National Congress

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