APNU+AFC HAS NO COUNTER TO THE PPPC’S STRATEGY
April 28, 2015 | By KNews | Filed Under Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom, Source
The People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPC) has a clear cut strategy for winning the elections. Their strategy is to ask the electorate to make a choice between continued progress under the PPP/C or going back to the dark dismal days of the PNCR.
The PPP/C is executing this strategy like clockwork. They are not straying from the script. The PPP/C is focused and intense in delivering their message to their supporters.
In so doing they have caused consternation within the opposition camp. The PPPC has been accused for fear mongering. But fear mongering is part of the strategy and it is indeed a legitimate strategy that has proven to be very effective.
Days before the recent elections in Israel, the polls suggested that Benjamin Netanyahu was going to lose the elections. The polls were right. He was going to lose the elections. However at the last moment, his party played the fear factor. He instilled in his supporters the fear of his country being taken over by a government that would be sympathetic to the Arab population and to the Palestinians. It worked. Netanyahu was able to cobble a coalition that commanded the majority needed for him to form the government.
Netanyahu later apologized for comments that he had made about Israeli Arabs. But he had already achieved his objective of creating certain fears that swung votes his way. His objective was already achieved.
The PPPC is spreading the fear factor. But this should not have surprised the opposition parties. For one, they should have anticipated that this would be the card that the PPP/C would play. The opposition parties should have had a counter. They have none. In fact they seem to have no clear cut strategy of their own. The PPP has effectively undercut the APNU+AFC’s campaign. The PPP/C has put a proposition to the electorate.
That proposition is that the electorate has more to fear from a militarized PNC coming back to power than all the corruption under the PPP/C. They have put a related proposition to the electorate: that the APNU+AFC than they have to fear under the PPP/C.
But the PPP/C has also done better than merely stoking fears, fears that lie deep in the recesses of the minds of their supporters. The PPP has also pointed to the significant progress that has been achieved under the rule. They have shown that while the PNC destroyed the country, they rebuilt it and have brought Guyana its finest hours.
And if just to prove their point they unveiled the Marriot Hotel and then the very next day a synthetic athletic track. The PPP/C is turning it on and they have turned up the ante just the APNU+AFC roller coaster was taking a breather rolled during the election campaign of some of the project. APNU will come back strong towards the last week of campaigning but they seem to have no answer to the PPP/C electoral strategy.
APNU+AFC should have been better prepared for this fear-mongering aspects of the PPP/C campaign. They should have looked back to all the previous PPP/C electoral campaigns. If they had done their analysis they would have noted that this theme about going back to the old days of food shortages and a police State was always in the PPP/C’s arsenal and was always practiced.
The PNCR has been unable to run from its record. It has never been able to run from what it did to this country. It has tried unsuccessfully to rewrite the political narrative of its time in power. It has tried to suggest that this past is not important. But it also had tried this latter strategy in the past and it did not work then. It is not going to work now.
Instead of trying to run from the past, the PNCR should have been facing its past, admitting to errors and terrors and then apologizing that would have put the past behind and not left so much baggage for the PPP/C to exploit to the hilt as is being done now.
APNU+AFC should also have had a counter to the PPP/C strategy. This strategy should not have caught them so vulnerable because it was predictable that the PPP/C would spin a web about the PNCR’s past. APNU+AFC should have seen this all along and prepared a counter strategy. They have not and will pay a big price for this oversight.
