The decline of the Working People’s Alliance
Twelve years after his assassination, the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) believed that Walter Rodney still lived. In 1992, the Working People’s Alliance was hell bent on denying Dr. Cheddi Jagan, the position of the Presidential candidate for the proposed Patriotic Coalition for Democracy (PCD) slate.
The rationale was simple. Jagan would not obtain the support of African Guyanese. When Jagan offered to step aside and put Dr. Roger Luncheon at the head of the slate, the objections came from the private sector who said that Luncheon was ‘Red’, meaning he was a communist.
The WPA eventually broke up the PCD when, at a critical stage of negotiations in which a compromise was in the making, it inexplicably joined in supporting GUARD’s choice of Ashton Chase as the consensus candidate.
This effectively ended the PCD and its plans for a joint slate. In the absence of a consensus candidate, there could be no joint slate. The absence of a joint slate rendered the prior discussions about the sharing of seats of mere academic purpose.
The WPA leadership may have even been pleased by the break-up of the PCD. They were still on cloud nine, twelve years after the assassination of Walter Rodney. They felt that Rodney’s memory would have made the party a major force in the elections of 1992. They felt that the PNC would have been rendered a 10% party and that their party would have given the PPP a serious run for its money in the elections.
The WPA barely got a seat in those elections. It was devastated at the polls. The elections turned out to be an ethnic census of Guyana and the WPA’s bubble burst in its face. October 5, 1992 may have restored democracy in Guyana. But it showed that ethnic polarization had not been diminished in thirty years.
Cheddi Jagan offered Clive Thomas a ministerial position as a Minister of Planning and Development. The WPA was divided over the offer. It was still reeling from the shock of its poor electoral showing. Some of the party’s leaders were still living in the past and believing that the party had standing amongst the people. And so they prevaricated.
One argument was that the PPP should not offer any position to individual leaders. The argument went on that the PPP must engage the WPA in negotiations. The party that barely one seat in a 65-seat National Assembly wanted negotiations with a party that won over thirty seats.
The PPPC was never going to go that route. It could not. It needed politically and constitutionally to bring order to the country quickly. A government had to be named immediately. It was the first change in government in twenty-eight years and the supporters of the PNC had begun to riot in the streets. The PPP went ahead and named its Cabinet.
Still, the WPA felt that it was in negotiation mode. Months after, when ‘boat done gone a falls’, it held a meeting with the Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon, the same person whom the private sector felt was too communist to become the President of Guyana.
What did the WPA expect to hear from the PCD? There was only one response: a Cabinet had been appointed. The issue of WPA participation in the Cabinet was no longer on the agenda. ‘Boat gone a falls!’
The WPA reaped what it sowed. It tried to be the Kingmaker of the consensus candidate for the 1992 elections. Like the Earl of Warwick under Henry VI, the people rejected king-making.
The elections of 1992 brought the WPA down from its headiness. It came crashing down to earth with its one seat. It has not done better ever since. It is now groveling at the feet of the PNC.
