70% of 31 = 21.7
No rounding down here, so give them 22.
30%, therefore, will be 9…using request for allocation of Coalition seats, for context.
We don’t know the arithmetic pre-election breakdown of seats and really don’t see that it matters.
What matters is Leadership – that complex skill set guiding a dependent electorate; negotiating with those you are minority to; creating pathways consistent with policy.
Strategizing to benefit from the proposed actions of the ruling Party is a leadership essential. And, all of these contiguously moving parts require tactical efficiency when success is the goal.
This demands an Opposition that anticipates effecting legal challenges, preemptively and consistently, to enforce its constitutional role as delineated for Guyana’s Cooperative Republic.
As proponents of history- oral and documented- we stand firmly behind the existence of the People’s National Congress as a Political Party.
And we say this to capture why British Guiana’s politics birthed its three initial political vehicles…People’s Progressive Party, People’s National Congress, The United Force and the ethnic compositions which formed their earliest base.
That the ruling Party has remained largely in its original form, retaining its ethnic composition as its base, is testament to its loyalty to race as documented by the CIA since Feb 1967.
We’re not experts in human behavior or any of its forms but will submit that an aura of leadership and its ability to galvanize, inspire and dispatch with commitment to the cause, are primary components of captaincy.
And we’re not invoking the lives of any of the dead…though the recall of the historic contributions of those past would serve as a guiding light in this moment of political load shedding. What we’re underscoring is the protracted lack of ascendant training for execution of roles outside of Party Politics.
We’re’ not suggesting that the ruling Party is an example.
But it’s homogeneity makes it a Party of the names of its leaders.
That’s why there will never be PPP intra- Party questioning of why the constitutional dictate of including the Opposition in deciding matters of State is flagrantly ignored- up to and including civic matters of police brutality of all stripes.
Party Primacy, a term ascribed in the derogative during previous leadership, is now standard order in the ruling Party.
Debate framed in constitution and governing policy are seemingly absent.
And if a democracy really exists, the unilateral actions of the ruling Party on matters of State would not be a matter course.
Excluding the participation of the Opposition because you have the upper hand is contemptuous to an electorate that elected two arms of government to guarantee a democratic process.
If your decision wins because you have the votes then so be it – but it respects the enshrined process.
Equally, if leaders are supported in disrespecting the process by Party members who choose job and silence over duty then they, too, have to be judged for failure to call on leaders to be of service to all of Guyana and not just Party and its policy.
We’ve seen some of what this leadership looks like.
Videos of Government assembling meetings at boot-camp hours, peppered with the chastisement of officials equated to a public flogging, were aired to demonstrate some ‘supreme leader’ power and control. Dispensing that display of crass values blotches the face of the nation and reminds us that authoritarian leadership thrives on fear…hence the public release of that governing abomination.
And the absence of leadership anywhere along the country’s political spectrum ushers in the literal rogues and scoundrels, selling their brand of politicking.
Gifting houses, automobiles and a variety of payments to cash strapped citizens, is one way to solicit the vote.
Prolonged lack, brought on by government failure to adequately provide for all of its citizens and their basic needs, will kill moral and values.
That a team of men, sanctioned by America’s Treasury Department and Homeland Securities Investigation
has made successful appeal to the heart strings of Guyanese, reportedly with direct aim for the nation’s Presidency, is testament to the deficit in the attraction of the present political entities.
And we’re not suggesting that these US Agencies are superior in moral valuation because America has elected a president who is a felon and a rapist. That said, it still sits at the head of the Political table and directs how its butler apportions the monetary vittle to nations of need.
Guyana’s elections for a change of government is coming, published or not.
For all their longevity, the current Opposition Party choices seem vulnerable in the face of public cries for new politics.
We’ve seen their leadership too and are unsurprised that at this 59th minute, there is a sparring for the number of seats to be apportioned before they represent the people.
If there were any correlation between the number of seats the Opposition Coalition controls and the benefits the electorate enjoys because of their advocacy, over the past five years, we may have missed it.
But Poverty and Government acts of aggression and exclusion, outwardly, have staked a place in national history.
The bulldozers and police arrived and decimated residences to the squeals of piglets and squawks of frantic fowls.
Maybe, if there were meaningful dialogue, part of the role the elected arms of government are expected to execute, people would have been treated with a measure of humanity and right to patrimony… is our opinion.
Squatter Policy is not unheard of…it is an actual tool.
Elections are upon us once more and the dynamics haven’t changed from either end of the two- arm government.
We may not know what campaigning looks like in Guyana these days but both arms are projecting victory, with little visible outreach to the electorate …if any.
Yet both sides are forecasting landslides.
There is no analytical or fact -based way for us to even guess a prediction.
Winning is more than just verbal brandishing. It requires votes.
Votes are earned by campaigning on a platform that expressly challenges past failures and immediate needs.
Does the electorate want more of the current, where nothing changes, because- the future will be the same as the past.
Whichever way the land slides, our prediction is that nothing will change if leadership never changes.
And that will be further aggravated by embracing the criminal element that seeks the shelter of political office for convenience more than for service to the nation.
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