THE PPP HAS BEEN CAUGHT NAPPING

The political protests by rice farmers on the Essequibo Coast should cause deep introspection on the part of the ruling People’s Progressive Party. These protests reveal, yet again, the Achilles Heel of the party. The AFC has once again outfoxed the ruling party. It has penetrated deep into the party’s support base in a Region which the PPP has swept in all the free and fair elections since and including the 1992 elections. That alone should be a frightening development for the PPP. It should be recalled that in 2011, the AFC lost support in Region Four. But where it penetrated deeply was in Regions Five and Six, more the latter than the former and stole valuable votes and seats from the PPP. The AFC owed the support it got in those two regions to the hard work done by remnants of Ravi Dev’s ROAR who went over to the AFC after the demise of ROAR. The AFC can no longer count on the former ROAR membership to rally support in Berbice. And to compound the AFC agonies in Regions Five and Six is the fact that the PPP has done its homework. Just after the 2011 elections, it began a concerted campaign to regain the votes that it lost. There is no need for an opinion poll to assess the extent to which this has been successful. You just need to ask the people on the ground in those Regions about the AFC. Their answers will confirm that the people do not wish to hear anymore about the AFC. The AFC is a spent political force in Berbice. The PPP has regained the ground that it lost there. But while the PPP has been concentrating its efforts in Berbice, it has neglected another of its strongholds, the Essequibo Coast. And the AFC did not need former ROAR activists to pounce on the PPP’s neglect. The AFC capitalized on concerns of rice farmers and led a strong protest that descended into unlawful actions such as the blockading of roads. Another PPP stronghold has been penetrated and the PPP will have to ask serious questions about the work of its own activists on the ground in the Essequibo Coast. The AFC has gained traction in that area and this comes at a time when the PPP is facing the strong possibility of an AFC no-confidence motion in parliament. The AFC used a traditional tactic to penetrate into the PPP’s base. It used an economic concern, this time the plight of the rice farmers. In the run up to the 2011 elections, the AFC sided with sugar workers who were demanding outstanding benefits. The PPP seeing how the sugar workers rallied to the side of AFC protests at Diamond were forced to relent its opposition to paying severance pay to the sugar workers of Diamond Estate which was being closed. But even the payment to these workers and a stirring rebuke by the PPP leadership of the AFC could not change things for the PPP. The sugar workers in Diamond collected their lawfully due severance pay and stayed away from the polls while their colleagues in Berbice told the then President Jagdeo that “boat done gone a falls”. The boat may not have yet gone over the falls in terms of the PPP support in Essequibo but there must be concern about the protest in Essequibo. The PPP has two issues to address in relation to these protests. The first is its leadership in Essequibo. The PPP has traditionally had problems with the quality of its leaders in the rural areas. In these modern times, it has persisted with the traditional method of recruiting and identifying its leaders. The people have long lost confidence in many of the PPP leaders in rural Guyana and this cost them handsomely in Berbice in the 2011 polls. The PPP has to look closely at who are and how it determines its leaders and activists in Essequibo and indeed in other parts of the country. Now that it is in government, it has lost many of its hardworking activists to official duties and therefore it has to ensure that there is quality leadership on the ground. The second concern is the fact that it did not see these protests coming. The AFC pounced on an issue that was of great concern to the people of Essequibo. They should never, from the perspective of the PPP, have been given that opportunity. The concerns of the people should have long been attended to. The PPP will have to ask serious questions about how this threat was not detected earlier and what were its cadres and leadership in Essequibo doing about the issue. But more importantly, it will have to ascertain why the Ministry of Agriculture did not act more swiftly on the matter before it became a lightning rod for the AFC.