ANUG has its work cut out

Dec 16, 2024 Letters

---

Dear Editor

The way political parties come into existence before national elections and fade away after in Guyana would lead one to believe that their only purpose is to win government with the least possible effort.

Generally, over time, parties need to identify, win, hold and expand their constituency whose interests they aggregate, integrate and represent in a fashion that allows them to play a substantial role in policymaking. Parties also provide information short-cuts that help the populace to make complex decisions and are vital arrangements when it comes to holding all policymakers accountable for their performance.

All this is usually set upon some higher moral values having to do with race, class, religion, geographic regional, etc., which party organisers ignore or misrepresent at their peril. This is particularly relevant to genuine new entrants, who must sensibly navigate the fluctuations of the existing political culture and structures. Thus, in a democracy political parties, particularly new entrants, must be vibrant and careful about the example they set in terms of the different dimensions of their behaviour and the information they communicate. This is the general context in which a reset is suggested for A New and United Guyana (ANUG).

The first of the 17 United Nations Development Goals call upon states to ‘end poverty in all its forms everywhere’ by implementing ‘nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including floors (a basic set of essential social rights and transfers in cash and kind to provide a minimum income and livelihood security for all and to facilitate effective demand for and access to essential goods and services) and by 2030 achieve substantial coverage of the poor and the vulnerable.’

Perhaps reflective of this kind of thinking, at no. 17 of its promise to the Guyanese electorate during the 2020 elections, ANUG said that it intends to ‘Ensure that a basic income is available firstly to those in need but eventually to all Guyanese’.

Notwithstanding Guyana’s newly acquired oil wealth, poverty is rife and there is a substantial demand for a basic income for the poor and possibly eventually for all Guyanese. Confronted by this public demand, the PPP government was compelled to change its position and is at present taking half measures: distribution a ‘one off’ $100,000 cash grant to all those 18 and over. Arguably, ANUG is among the first parties to have made this proposal and should have been dirving this important discussion, but where has ANUG been?

 

Then again, ANUG’s number one promise was to ‘Through constitutional reform establish a system of shared governance that provides security, stability and equality for Guyanese of all ethnic groups.’  The party appears to have taken the position that it did not win enough votes at the last elections to indicate that the population is interested in shared governance. But any such belief constitutes a major misreading of political responses in Guyana. Outside of who holds ultimate power, one cannot determine what the electorate wants by way of national elections in this ethnically bifurcated society. Indeed, based on such an assumption, one could also conclude that the voters would not support poverty alleviation by some form of minimum income, and perhaps that is why the party has been largely silent on this matter.

 

In terms of political manoeuvrings, ANUG has made important missteps that have allowed a substantial number of Guyanese to place it in the PPP’s camp. Last week I stated that having noted the negative role ethnically based political divisions and parties have played in Guyanese history and that the APNU+AFC coalition government had not fulfilled its mandate to reform the system, ANUG argued that such political behaviour has us all wanting to believe that political promises mean nothing.  It rejected this position and went on to promise that ‘Our party undertakes that it will never enter a coalition with any other political party or any of its members for the purpose of securing a role in government.’

 

ANUG was thus formed to improve the moral basis of politics in Guyana, but lo and behold, it is now locked in a controversy with Ms. Asha Kissoon because, although ‘two wrongs don’t make a right,’ it colluded with her in doing perhaps worst than it claimed it would not do: they took from the PPP what that party had no historical or moral authority to give and what is against the interest of the electorate. Historically, the deputy speakership goes to the opposition, and during the elections campaign the PNC was lambasted for usurping that position after the 2015 elections.  By taking the deputy speaker’s position, ANUG also joined the side of the PPP in its quarrel with the PNC and so lost much of its multiethnic moral capacity. True, it was a member of a joinder group that took the position, but it could have firstly argued for a refusal of the position and if the other parties insisted upon this gift from the PPP, made a public objection to their doing and take no further part in the arrangement. In a sense, Asha Kissoon is merely now following in the footsteps of ANUG: taking and keeping what does not now belong to her!

 

A discourse is raging over arrangements for the 2020 elections and the opposition is calling for significant reform of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM). It wants the dismissal of the chairperson who it claims has been consistently voting with the government side of the commission, a new list of voters and biometrics. There are other issues that need legal/administrative clarity, e.g. campaign financing, the length of time it takes for the courts to complete elections petitions, the authority GECOM has to decided upon the complaints it receives before calling the elections for any party (I will not dwell here upon the reckless position ANUG took on this issue during the 2020 elections) etc. Yet having recently met the Carter Centre during their latest fact-finding mission, reportedly ‘(Mr. Timothy) Jonas (the former ANUG chairperson) expressed the view that the electoral system was essentially sound; highlighting that it was the transparency of the process which allowed the public to be immediately alerted by the attempt to undermine the process in 2020’ (SN: 08/07/2024).

 

If Dr. Mark France and the new ANUG executive is to make any impact during the coming elections ‘de gat de wok cut out fu dem’. It is true that parties do change their positions, but it is important in a competitive democratic environment for them to keep their constituencies and the electorate informed in a timely manner and to persistently lobby for their interests. ANUG was formed knowing that the PPP and PNC are ethnically-based political parties that over decades have kept Guyana impoverished and divided. By sheer luck some wealth has dropped into the coffers of the current PPP regime, but instead of focusing on using it in the people’s interest, it is squandering it to bolster its autocracy.  Dr. France has restated that his party intends to end the winner-takes-all system of government. This is good but in the context of the above discourse, it would be useful for him to urgently provide some details of what he intends on this and a range of other issues.

Sincerely,

Dr. Henry Jeffrey

(ANUG has its work t)

---

• APNU+AFC coalition, general context, Guyana would lead, Ms. Asha Kissoon, poverty alleviation

---