There are ongoing, if sporadic, efforts within the Opposition camp to replicate the successful APNU/AFC coalition that contested the 2015 elections. This fell apart quite acrimoniously after their 2020 defeat, but with elections scheduled within the year, they must overcome some formidable hurdles. The permutations and combinations of possible coalitions are almost infinite, but in general they form a continuum if we group them according to (a) how, why, and when they were formed; (b) whether they were intended to be permanent or not; and (c) whether the component parties remain separate or combined in structure.
What is often forgotten is that coalitions are, first and foremost, coalitions of various interests represented by the member parties. At one end of the spectrum is the “coalition of convenience”, at the other end is the “alliance”; and somewhere in between, there is the “coalition of commitment”. With APNU formed when the PNC coalesced with five “paper parties” which had no mass support, it was essentially a “coalition of convenience” to defeat the PPP. The PNC wanted to reinvent itself as a “gentler, kinder” party, and while the paper parties did not bring in much support, in exchange for seats in Parliament, their role was to provide the “cover” with a new name, APNU. Granger provided a new leader without baggage.
Apart from the GAP that emerged from the Amerindian constituency, it was not clear whose specific interests the paper parties represented even as they retained their “identities” and names under the APNU umbrella. Strains soon appeared while they were in government, and the WPA withdrew from both the governing coalition and APNU over “lack of consultations”.
APNU will now have to be reconstituted, after the paper parties staged a palace coup against the dominant PNC, but recently evidently relented without explicit agreements. The WPA remains determined to be separate while promoting the notion of an Opposition grand coalition to remove the PPP from office – ensuring at best a coalition of convenience.
The individual parties are thus stubbornly resisting the move away from the coalition of convenience’s expedient electoral focus, while ignoring the cleavages and forces that made them form separate parties in the first place. These differences would inevitably surface later – as they did between 2015 and 2020 – when policies and programmes are formulated and implemented.
Another fissiparous factor is that even though the PNC may have lost some support because of the PPP’s relentless post-2030 strategy of widening their base,there remains an overweening disproportion of size between them and the paper parties.
As PNC leader Norton stresses, they see themself as the senior member to which the smaller parties should defer; while the latter consider themselves equals due to their strategic position in potentially “tipping the balance”. Unless addressed, the cynicism that attends the birth of such coalitions of convenience ensures an early, acrimonious death – as with the coalition between the PNC and the UF in 1964. The alternative is for the smaller parties to accept the reality of obsequiously playing second fiddle, since the large will do what they can while the small suffer what they must.
Now that there are talks initiated between the Opposition parties, including the AFC, towards relaunching a coalition, they should learn from theory and their experience that they have to form a coalition of commitment, or even a true “alliance”, by addressing the major cleavages that separate them. They should aim to be permanent, and in tune with this aspiration, field a common slate and promote a common programme under a common leadership. In the past, a major problem has been the refusal to publicly accept that one of the interests that are sought to be protected is ethnic interest.
The AFC had done so by explicitly identifying ethnic leaders on the top of their slate. However, in the rebuilding phase in which they are presently enmeshed, after new leadership was elected, they have veered away from the foundational principle.
The parties all appear to be operating under what has been described as the “Iron Law of Institutions”. This posits that some “people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution “fail” while they remain in power within the institution, than for the institution to “succeed” if that requires them to lose power within the institution.”
Better must come if Guyana can have the Opposition party to ensure a viable democracy.
