This bankrupt race politics:
Sunday, 25 September 2011 03:25
Source: Chronicle editorial
OLD HABITS die hard. The combined opposition parties and the race-oriented elements officially out of their ranks but quietly sharing a common objective for state power, stand as a sad reminder of this truism as Guyana keeps moving forward with arrangements for new parliamentary and presidential elections this year.
The shared habit of the desperate group of at least one of the parties now being marketed under the umbrella of APNU (A Partnership for National Unity) is the politics of playing the race card. It is the politics of decadence that has never resulted in a free and fair national election for a democratic government in Guyana since after that of 1964.
With the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) still emerging after that first election under the system of Proportional Representation (PR) with the single largest bloc of votes and seats, the Anglo-American strategy of keeping it out of state power was to manifest itself in a coalition of sorts involving the People’s National Congress (PNC) and the United Force (UF).
Soon, the PNC, under Forbes Burnham’s leadership, was to out-manoeuvre its junior UF partner to take full control of the reins of government. The rest is history. From then onwards, raw racism and rigged elections surfaced as twin pillars of a political culture that became the norm under successive PNC administrations. The PNC had also found it necessary to resort to street violence and the politics of assassination, with Walter Rodney being the best known among a number of victims.
When all illegal and anti-democratic means failed by October 1992 to prevent free and fair elections that returned to government the PPP, with a civic component, it was to augur a bright new dawn for Guyana, and the beginning of an enormous task to bring an end to social and economic decay, and the culture of state-fostered racism.
It has been a Herculean challenge. But the successive endorsements of the PPP/C by the electorate to govern the affairs of this nation should have been the salutary reminder to the combined opposition forces—parties and groups oriented to violence and slander—that playing the race card against the incumbent has proven to be a dismal, bankrupt approach.
After being defeated at successive elections since 1992, the PNC, from Desmond Hoyte to Robert Corbin,was to remain trapped by the politics of race in pretending to be championing the cause of the Afro-Guyanese with the not-too-subtle underlying message that the governing party was only for the ‘other people’ (read Indo-Guyanese).
The reality of Guyana’s parliamentary politics is that neither of the traditional major contestants can be assured of an outright victory without securing votes across ethnic electoral boundaries.
Neither major ethnic community has sufficient ethnic-based eligible electors to win a free and fair election. This is the good news of nurturing electoral democracy in Guyana under the PPP/C after 28 years of financial and political corruption of governments in this country under the PNC.
Now enters APNU with a claimed dominant PNC base—yet to be clearly defined—and a pitiful array of small parties that are good at shouting slogans, insults and threats, but woefully lacking in offering serious alternative policies that could maintain Guyana on the established path for further social and economic advancement as charted by the incumbent PPP/C.
Following with its offerings of pitiful contradictions,is the AFC which heavily depends on foreign sources for its survival.
The main problem for the PNC is that having resorted to the old divisive race politics at previously conducted free and fair elections since 1992,that it has failed to win, what makes the new-face APNU with ex-GDF Brigadier David Granger as its presidential candidate feel confident of securing the next government by painting over political slogans while staying the course with the race message to appeal primarily to Afro-Guyanese?
Is this the respect they have for Guyanese of African descent when they engage in the slanderous politicking of head-counting, as if such Guyanese are incapable of independently and soberly assessing for themselves the impressive achievements of governments by the PPP/C these 19 years and without ignoring the shortcomings?
No wonder the opposition have more recently extended this bankrupt politics even to the courts in the hope of whipping up resentment of one section of the population against the rest.
Fortunately for Guyana, the Guyanese who head, or are among the significant decision-makers of our major institutions, including the justice administration system and police and military forces, know quite well that they are where they are on the basis of merit, their expertise, their commitment to service and country and not their ethnicity. This is good for Guyana.
Sunday, 25 September 2011 03:25
Source: Chronicle editorial
OLD HABITS die hard. The combined opposition parties and the race-oriented elements officially out of their ranks but quietly sharing a common objective for state power, stand as a sad reminder of this truism as Guyana keeps moving forward with arrangements for new parliamentary and presidential elections this year.
The shared habit of the desperate group of at least one of the parties now being marketed under the umbrella of APNU (A Partnership for National Unity) is the politics of playing the race card. It is the politics of decadence that has never resulted in a free and fair national election for a democratic government in Guyana since after that of 1964.
With the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) still emerging after that first election under the system of Proportional Representation (PR) with the single largest bloc of votes and seats, the Anglo-American strategy of keeping it out of state power was to manifest itself in a coalition of sorts involving the People’s National Congress (PNC) and the United Force (UF).
Soon, the PNC, under Forbes Burnham’s leadership, was to out-manoeuvre its junior UF partner to take full control of the reins of government. The rest is history. From then onwards, raw racism and rigged elections surfaced as twin pillars of a political culture that became the norm under successive PNC administrations. The PNC had also found it necessary to resort to street violence and the politics of assassination, with Walter Rodney being the best known among a number of victims.
When all illegal and anti-democratic means failed by October 1992 to prevent free and fair elections that returned to government the PPP, with a civic component, it was to augur a bright new dawn for Guyana, and the beginning of an enormous task to bring an end to social and economic decay, and the culture of state-fostered racism.
It has been a Herculean challenge. But the successive endorsements of the PPP/C by the electorate to govern the affairs of this nation should have been the salutary reminder to the combined opposition forces—parties and groups oriented to violence and slander—that playing the race card against the incumbent has proven to be a dismal, bankrupt approach.
After being defeated at successive elections since 1992, the PNC, from Desmond Hoyte to Robert Corbin,was to remain trapped by the politics of race in pretending to be championing the cause of the Afro-Guyanese with the not-too-subtle underlying message that the governing party was only for the ‘other people’ (read Indo-Guyanese).
The reality of Guyana’s parliamentary politics is that neither of the traditional major contestants can be assured of an outright victory without securing votes across ethnic electoral boundaries.
Neither major ethnic community has sufficient ethnic-based eligible electors to win a free and fair election. This is the good news of nurturing electoral democracy in Guyana under the PPP/C after 28 years of financial and political corruption of governments in this country under the PNC.
Now enters APNU with a claimed dominant PNC base—yet to be clearly defined—and a pitiful array of small parties that are good at shouting slogans, insults and threats, but woefully lacking in offering serious alternative policies that could maintain Guyana on the established path for further social and economic advancement as charted by the incumbent PPP/C.
Following with its offerings of pitiful contradictions,is the AFC which heavily depends on foreign sources for its survival.
The main problem for the PNC is that having resorted to the old divisive race politics at previously conducted free and fair elections since 1992,that it has failed to win, what makes the new-face APNU with ex-GDF Brigadier David Granger as its presidential candidate feel confident of securing the next government by painting over political slogans while staying the course with the race message to appeal primarily to Afro-Guyanese?
Is this the respect they have for Guyanese of African descent when they engage in the slanderous politicking of head-counting, as if such Guyanese are incapable of independently and soberly assessing for themselves the impressive achievements of governments by the PPP/C these 19 years and without ignoring the shortcomings?
No wonder the opposition have more recently extended this bankrupt politics even to the courts in the hope of whipping up resentment of one section of the population against the rest.
Fortunately for Guyana, the Guyanese who head, or are among the significant decision-makers of our major institutions, including the justice administration system and police and military forces, know quite well that they are where they are on the basis of merit, their expertise, their commitment to service and country and not their ethnicity. This is good for Guyana.
