Retirement looms for leaders of all three parliamentary parties

March 3, 2015 | By KNews | Filed Under Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom, Source

The 2015 general election in Guyana will be a defining one for the three main political parties but not necessarily for the country. All of the three parliamentary political parties will undergo a metamorphosis after the elections, regardless of who wins the polls- that is a certainty- but there is no guarantee that any of the parties will pursue policies outside of the neoliberal model.

In other words, the parties will undergo change but there is no guarantee that the country will change direction economically or even politically.

We have already begun to see implications for civil society and independent politics. Emerging civil society is about to choose a different cap.

The United States has been unwisely seeking to promote in Guyana a system of political pluralism. If they understood the politics of Guyana and how polarized the society is, they would have recognized that the impossibility of their mission.

But the United States acts like an imperial power and believes their system is the best one and they have a right to impose it on others without considering the peculiarities of the situation.

US strategy over the past few years has been to promote and build capacity of civil society. But what the US failed to appreciate was that civil society in Guyana has historically been polarized.

To create an independent space for them was never going to be easy. A start was made but it now seems as if the politicians are seeking to gobble up that space and leave the US plans in tatters.

The politicization of civil society that is now taking place will put paid to the US designs to create political room for the emergence of influential civil society groupings and space for independent political parties.

The politics of Guyana will continue after 2015 to be dominated by the two main political forces.

But for the individual parties there will be serious ramifications. For most of the top leaders of both APNU and the AFC, the 2015 elections will be their last chance to hold political office. Age is not on the side of many of them. If they do not get power in 2015, some of these leaders will be forced to recede into the political sunset.

It is the same for the PPP. For most of the top leaders of the PPPC, this is their last stint in power. They will have to give way to younger heads. A new generation of political leaders is likely to emerge, one way or the other after these elections.

For APNU, it will be time for new leaders. If APNU loses, the old guard will depart. If they win, new leaders will have to be groomed for 2020 and beyond. It will be the same for the PPP and it will be the same for the AFC.

Many have questioned the rationale for the AFC joining with APNU this time around when they had rejected doing so in the past and had made it clear that they would never join with either the AFC or the PPP.

The answer to why they did this has to do with an aging leadership. For many in the leadership of the AFC, this is their last chance to hold public office. If they do not get into power this May, they never will, and they will have to retire.

The election therefore has implications for all three of the political parties. It will bring the curtains down on the political careers of many a leader in all three parties. For this reason, the election will be a defining one.

But for the country there is no guarantee that anything is going to change. The three parties are competitors for political power. But ideologically, they are indistinguishable. None of the three parties have sought to define themselves ideologically.

This could only mean that they are cut from the same bolt of cloth. There is no difference in their political orientation. They are all neoliberal parties or controlled by neo-liberal interests and therefore the task of defining where they stand ideologically is an inconvenient one for all three because they adhere to the same ideology.

The ideological choice facing the electorate is not between Left and Right. The electorate is being asked: Who amongst these parties is the better neo-liberalist and who is best suited to administer a capitalist economy?