The PPP has finally self-destructed

What the PPP did yesterday when it prorogued Parliament was to push the PNC to the wall so that the PNC hasn’t got anywhere to go but to fight back. What the PPP did yesterday is to put the PNC in position that either the PNC fights or commits suicide.
No party anywhere in the world would want to be in the PNC’s shoes today.
No party leadership anywhere in the world would envy the PNC today. The PNC has no choice. Either the PNC, along with other nationalist forces, remove the PPP, push the PPP to the negotiating table for constitutional reform and constitutional reform only or accept that the PPP is so invincible that it could smother the electoral majority of the opposition.
I was on the picket line, yesterday, and I literally cannot count the number of times I have been asked the same question – “What do you think is going to happen now? Only the PNC can save the PPP from falling.”
Despite its political courage and huge moral fortress, the AFC hasn’t got the numbers to weaken the PPP. Whatever are your views of Mr. Granger and the PNC, only the PNC can initiate the process for regime change.
I saw the numbers it brought out yesterday. They rightfully removed the barriers and took up strategic positions outside the front gate of Parliament. If Mr. Granger didn’t request them not to rush into the parliamentary compound but to wait for further instructions, Parliament would have been swarmed.
As the barriers came tumbling down, there were no ignorant reactions from the dozens of police ranks and there weren’t any request for police vans. The police did a wise thing; they backed off. Had they moved to arrest the barricade-rushers, there would have been a dangerous descent into violence. I was there among them. I saw the anger.
What the President did yesterday was so stupid that he has destroyed any conceivable legacy he could have shaped for himself. The career of Donald Ramotar is over. He has used a draconian and authoritarian constitution to dissolve a majority elected parliament. But here is the thing. Does a population have a right to remove an unpopular, unelected government?
Most of the philosophy books including the seminal authority on the subject, Thomas Hobbes, would answer in the affirmative. What the PPP has done is to self-destruct. What Donald Ramotar has done is to self-destruct. An army would refuse to sanction a coup or remain reticent while an insurrection is designed to remove a legally elected government. In the Guyana situation, the PPP is not a majority government and it has suspended a majority parliament elected in a free and fair election.
By demobilizing an elected majority National Assembly, the PPP has now opened itself to the accusation that it is illegal. It cannot argue that it has elected power when the President has extirpated an elected National Assembly. The decapitation of Parliament yesterday now empowers the opposition to call on the society not to recognize a presidency that rules by decrees.
What is going to be interesting is to see if the PNC is going to adopt the Ogunseye formula. It was Tacuma Ogunseye at a public meeting in Beterverwagting who told the audience that African-based organizations must solicit the support of the security forces as a matter of solidarity. The PPP in an angry response, suggested that Ogunseye was treading on illegal incitement.
It will be fascinating to see if the PNC embraces the Ogunseye formula at its definitive meeting on Friday evening. What could possible be the response of the PPP? Here is where the PPP threw itself in the deep end. Once it was a legally elected minority regime with all the recognition of the democratic paraphernalia including a functioning National Assembly, one could come close to being accused of incitement if one were to urge the security forces not to recognize the elected minority government.
But the situation becomes complex if the Ogunseye method is pursued. The PPP cannot say that it is an elected government and therefore pleas to the security forces will not be tolerated when the very opposition making those urgings can counter the PPP with the fact that a legally elected Parliament was put out of business and therefore rule by decree is illegal, illegitimate and should not be accepted.
One suspects that the Ogunseye theory will show its head as the days move on. But one thing for sure; the PNC has no room for manoeuvre. Its elected majority which it enjoyed with the AFC in Parliament is gone.