…as “political analysis”
Some “big men” can really make themselves look foolish when they’re hanging their mouths where they expect some soup to “leak”. Take this fella Ken Danns, who has a PhD (sociology?) and used to teach at UG back in the day. Imagine, he wrote a long treatise on “coalition” politics in the Chronic; mentioned as to how the PNC quickly dumped its coalition partner – the UF – but never mentioned it remained in power for another TWENTY-FOUR YEARS by rigging elections!!
How can you then take him seriously? Especially when he insisted that, post-1992, the PPP “won subsequent elections appealing to its majority ethnic base.” So, appealing to an “ethnic base” is more reprehensible than rigging elections? Oi vey!!
And what kind of base did the PNC depend on to garner 42% of the vote in 1992 — the same percentage it received in 1964 — conceded to be the most polarised in the history in Guyana? And the man is a sociologist?
Danns’s main contention is that both the PNC (1992) and the PPP (2015) were removed by “coalition politics,” but the present PNC’s version is the real deal! He claims it was the 5-member Patriotic Coalition for Democracy (PCD) that provided the “impetus” for removing the PNC in ’92, but the PPP went on its own, unlike the present coalition between APNU and the AFC! What a fairy tale!!
Fact of the matter is that: back in 1992, the PPP wanted a coalition but the WPA demanded not only 50% of the Ministries, but that the leader of the PPP, Dr Jagan, not be the presidential candidate!!! He might just provoke an uprising from African Guyanese, who found him unacceptable. Then, as now, the WPA had never shown its support base justified such demands, but stuck to its guns, and destroyed any hope of a coalition.
Fast forward to 2015, and what do we find in this “laudable coalition” founded on the prior one between the PNC and five other minuscule groups, including the WPA, to form APNU? The WPA was now willing to coalesce with the PNC; was not the PNC ethnically-based?? Would it not be “unacceptable’ to Indian Guyanese? What made THIS coalition kosher — That its ethnic base was African Guyanese? Did goat bite Indian Guyanese?
This is what Danns — after two years of betrayals, backstabbing, demotions, poutings and accusations of “non-consultations” — conclude in 2017: “What brought these parties together was the integrity, dignity and competence of their leadership, and their commitment to put Guyana first above narrow partisan interests and ideologies”!!
Is Danns bucking for some soup from Granger’s Cabinet? Or is it from Ivelaw Griffith’s?
…and COIs
As sure as the sun would rise in the east, everyone was certain the PNC-led coalition Government’s response to its latest crisis – the torching and razing of the Camp St Jail – would be a CoI. And so said, so done. This Government has now earned itself a place in the Guinness Book of Records for appointing the most Commissions of Inquiry in the shortest period. The British actually had two more CoIs, but then they took 200 years to accomplish that task!
But exactly what do they expect from these CoIs – apart from trying to show the Guyanese people they are “doing something”? By now, however, everyone knows they’re just “trying a thing”! Fool us once, shame on you; fool us 153 times, shame on me – and all my descendants! Point is: Guyanese have to put their feet down on this continuous bumbling.
It’s not just the Government that’s looking hapless; it’s our nation becoming hopeless.
It’s not just Ramjattan who must go; it’s the entire lot in government — lock, stock and barrel!
…on “inclusiveness”
The Government blames the PPP for being “inflexible” about cooperating with it.
After submitting three lists for the GECOM chairmanship when they should’ve gone to the courts, is the PPP “inflexible”??!
Shameless!!
