Even though under the threat of torture the Pope in 1633 forced Galileo to recant his theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not the other way round, as he left the courtroom, Galileo is said to have muttered, ‘all the same, it moves’. Well, the earth has kept moving and after every 365 days it is back where it began and we start another year – today, 2022. It is our tradition that towards the end of the “old year” we would have reflected on noteworthy events that occurred and make wishes for the new this year- as the earth continues its eternal movement around our Sun.
But while we have formed this break between “old year and new year”, we know this is an arbitrary marker and in reality, the events of not just last year, but past years continue to influence events in this year and future years. As such, we have witnessed the PNC obdurate refusal to adhere to democratic norms. This began all the way back in 1968 when it rigged that year’s elections and continued to do so until finally, we had “free and fair elections” in 1992. After they managed to get back to office twenty-three years later in 2015, they promptly reverted to their election-rigging ways at the next elections in 2020. This was after violating the Constitution by refusing to allow the denouement of a No-Confidence Motion (NCM) to play out in their resignation in 2019.
Their pattern of undemocratic behaviour continued into the very end of last year when we witnessed one of the most shocking violations of the norms of our parliamentary system that are meant to inculcate the civility that undergirds the handling of disagreement in a democratic polity. We refer, of course, to the debate on the National Resource Fund (NRF) Bill, where the PNC MPs not only stormed the neutral area between the Government and Opposition benches but actually seized the Mace that represents the authority of the Speaker and Parliament. Unwilling to accept that democratic differences are settled in a Parliamentary Democracy by a vote at the end of the debate, they crudely sought to circumvent the rules by removing the Mace in the belief that this maneuver would vitiate the vote. They failed but demonstrated to the nation once again that they are totally unprepared to follow democratic rules.
As such, while we would hope that this New Year would be different from the last in the political realm that still dominate our societal functioning, we are not optimistic. Optimism rests on at least a modicum of facts that suggest our desired outcome but in their absence all one would be left with is blind faith. All of this is very unfortunate since two factors have come into a confluence that could guarantee not only our country a bright and conflict-free future but also the PNC a share of that happy state in this New Year and beyond.
And these are firstly the fortuitous circumstance of our remarkable oil find which will guarantee a flow of funds of such a magnitude as to underwrite all the developmental dreams we harboured since we struggled to become independent. At long last, we do not have to go with beggar’s bowl in hand to other countries and the Multilateral Financial Institutions for aid that only come with conditionalities to leave us crippled. Secondly, and more pertinently for the political travails that have proven even more crippling than the poverty, we have experienced a demographic shift in the last decade so that no one ethnic group commands a majority. Because of this new contingency, no one party in our country where voting remains ethnically driven, commands a majority to capture a majority to deliver the government.
Each of the two major parties, the PPPC and the PNC-led APNU/AFC have an equal chance if they act rationally and reach across the ethnic divides with moderate, non-confrontational programs and actions. It is up to the PNC to act rationally so that we have a Happy 2022.
