JANUARY 15, 2012 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER FEATURES / COLUMNISTS, PEEPING TOM
By its own standards, the PPP/C lost significant support in the just concluded 2011 elections. This decline in popularity was most pronounced within Region 6, long believed to be the heartland of the party’s support base.
So what accounts for the disastrous performance of the PPP/C within the Berbice area?
A number of factors have been posited over the past few months, including the Nagamootoo factor. But in Berbice, the PPP/C lost support primarily because of its party organization.
The PPP/C is unwilling to accept the real reasons for its decline. Those responsible for the less than stellar performance of the party in 2011 are trying to divert the leadership of the PPP from the real causes and seeking to blame the party’s organization for what went wrong nationally. This, of course, is all part of the plan to avoid fallout from the elections, which can hurt key members of the leadership who have fallen into political disgrace.
Just after the elections, the campaign manager of the PPP, who has so far surprisingly survived the fallout from the elections, blamed the supporters of the party for not going out to vote. But this fact alone does not explain particularly what went wrong within the Berbice area, or does it indicate why there was such widespread disaffection with the PPP in its traditional stronghold.
While nationally there were many causes of the PPP’s decline, in Region 6 the factor overwhelmingly responsible for the PPP’s loss of support was its political organization within that region.
For too long, the PPP allowed mediocrity to take command of the party machinery in Berbice. The PPP has never tried to court sound leadership within Berbice or attempted to incorporate persons who could reach out to broader segments of the society in that region. It always went for political unknowns in Berbice.
As such, most of the political decisions in that area were made by a small group of individuals who dominated the PPP’s business in Region 6 for too long, and who had long lost the support of large sections of the population.
If at the national level, political power tended to be centralized in the hands of one individual, then in Region 6, political power was centralized in the hands of two individuals, and these individuals dominated the PPP’s activities in Region 6 and attracted a great deal of political disaffection.
In Berbice also, the state machinery was extremely weak, and therefore most of the power within that region was exercised by a few individuals. These individuals were virtually given licence to do as they pleased and they did as they saw fit, and not everyone liked that what they did.
The much vaunted PPP machinery fell apart in Region 6 during the elections. This was evident from the very first rally of the PPP which was held in Albion. The party’s propaganda machinery tried to boost the numbers, but it was clear that even with carousel-type mobilization, the PPP did not attract the sort of crowds it had come to expect from that area.
This should have been a wake-up call to the PPP that something was amiss. In fact things were amiss a long time ago. The people of Region 6 had become tired of the two-man show that passed off for political decision-making in Berbice. They were not impressed and they certainly had a great deal of concerns which were not being addressed.
The failure of the PPP to make changes earlier to their leadership in Region 6 had to do with a number of factors. Firstly, the PPP traditionally has always been reluctant to change key political figures in that Region – even after it was clear that those figures had outlived their political usefulness. The PPP tends to persist with its leaders for too long, often keeping them afloat while suppressing new and fresh leadership better suited to the times. Many of these leaders over time lost touch with the grassroots support and often were embroiled in controversies, accused of being politically arrogant, and tended to flaunt their authority.
Secondly, because the PPP was in power for so long, the government quickly assumed dominance over the political decision- making, and the party became alienated from political power and eventually subservient to the then political elite. As such, the little Gods in Berbice felt that with central state power behind them they were invincible.
In the end the grassroots supporters left in droves – some to Suriname and others withdrew permanently from the political process or crossed-over to the AFC, which had been quietly doing work within the Region long before the elections.
The government has a habit of timing developmental works to coincide with elections. The people of Region 6 however showed that they were impatient with this approach, and when the PPP’s timing went off-key in the run-up to the elections – so much so that the distribution of laptops under the OLPF project only kicked in a few weeks before the elections – it was clear that the goodies had come too late and the people had had enough of that form of politicking.
Days before the elections, the PPP got a wake-up call. They got an early warning about what was to happen on Election Day. A group of sugar workers expressed their disaffection with their pay. The President himself flew up to the area to speak to them, but that was a lost cause. The workers told him flatly, “Boat dun gone ah falls.”
If the PPP is to regain its support in Berbice, it has to totally revamp the party machinery in that area. There seems to be a move in this direction, but as everything else, the PPP has always been too cautious.
Unless it takes the bull by the horns and undertakes a radical reform of its political organization in Region 6, the PPP will find that it will be unable to regain lost ground.
The people of Berbice have had enough of the two-man show. They want to see change, and they want to see it fast.