This turned up in our research.
The signature rhetorical retreat and promises constructed on a vacuum of action is the brand the PNC(R)has been shamed into.
It will be injudicious to cite this rationale and compare it to any other. We’ll blame its appearance on the algorithm of Google Info gathering and forgive it because it’s inanimate.
But its good deed is that it forces us to see how void of acumen and lacking in basic substance the strategy it is.
We don’t expect a reveal of specific techniques. But this exposes the go- to word-loop as camouflage for the lack of everything leadership needs, grimace included.
A better model for current protests by the Opposition might be what happened when Desmond Hoyte launched his offensive, took to the streets in 1997 December, through January 1998.
His was more than the premise of election irregularities. It was the physical evidence and an easy explanation to inform protesters why demonstration of this nature– organized protest– was in their best interest.
The confluence of moral outrage and institutional discipline is nurtured, not stoked.
Existing administrative organization and managerial expertise within the Party are what, actually, designate control. Once elected, it forms functional authority, not theoretical teasers.
We don’t know the stimulus in detail but the out come of Desmond Hoyte’s protests provides permission for reverse engineering.
There is Civil Disobedience and Political Protest.
Desmond Hoyte’s actions, following the election result in December of 1997, fall into the latter category.
It was a macro-level political offensive designed to achieve a specific and definitive outcome.
Intimate knowledge of related politics, granular understanding of all their elements, were key to devising and deploying the plan which was well sifted and meticulously parsed.
It was the exact formula for the sustained pressure that the ‘Hoyte Offensive’ mounted. It forced structural and political settlement concessions. That they were brokered by CARICOM affirms that the strategy was sufficiently effective to command Regional intercession.
Then came the agreements.
The major one was forcing Janet Jagan back to the bargaining table. We’d say she was clad in her Presidential label deemed illegitimate by Chief Justice Desiree Bernard.
But that might, posthumously, give her the accolades she sought in her display of presidential petulance and de-sanctification of office, in ‘97, when she thought the Opposition was inferior.
The Herdmanston Accord stands as an enduring historical monument to leadership and its utility, when paired with knowledge.
Its objectives were clear and measurable –there was plain and specific demand. The narrative had moral core, appealing to the nation’s conscience about disregard for Constitution and preference, by some, for illegitimacy.
Protest routes were not just in strongholds but in the city, which carried high economic weight.
Motor cyclists were deployed. Protesters came on foot . The telecommunications system was flooded with unusual
call volume.
It was organized chaos, engineered to arrest attention as only a meticulously designed plan can. It was so monumental that it got the time-honored Washington Post– Democracy Dies in Darkness – to tell it.
And this incomparable achievement, as delineated in the St. Lucia Statement, places the PNC in that elite tier of leadership that earned its trust with the Instruments of Independence by the colonialists, who conferred the status on the nation.
The party’s right to lead is not merely contemporary but foundational. It has a historic bio- signature of eclipsing itself.
And we back this with specific archival references and historical analyses, like this read .
When a Party fails to even, resemble, past leadership, it testifies to a couple of maladies. The lessons of foundation and blue print may not have been taught or learned or have been discarded in a show of proclaimed erudition.
There is respect for what is termed institutional memory because it gives deference to the slips and falls it pushed past. All of the administrative feuds that were burnt yielded ashes that are now part of the foundation’s integrity.
When the system is a two-party one, it is easier to detect the fault lines.
We concede that the country’s Parties have different structural incentives and voter demographics but, in Guyana, one has remained, literally, true to its colors.
The People’s Progressive Party( PPP) has overseen the worst days of the country…pre and post election.
Oil and flour shortage never compares to the years of blood shed and extrajudicial killings the Foreign Community dubs ‘The Troubles“
that this Party’s Administration has, literally, overseen.
And it is always important to let this fact be known…as are those about continued black outs, water shortages and random killings, per the US State Department Reports.
Did we mention Guyana’s current placement on the World Corruption Perception Index…another defining trait of PPP’s Administration?
An operating system of malfeasance? We’re not saying it.
But why does it look like systemic failure, institutional ill-discipline and strategic misdirection are, all, coded directly into the daily mechanics of the State?
Again, it’s not us.
But, amidst the oil gush and the boasted, flattering, headlines of ‘fastest growing economy in the world’, Guyana still enjoys the paltry credit rating of 15 out of 100.
The descriptions of ‘junk’ and ‘highly speculative’ forewarn against investing in the country. That the alert runs parallel to its label of ‘fastest growing economy’ is a mathematical indictment of governance overseeing national assets.
This brings us back to the concept of Party because governance is the act of the leading faction.
The Opposition elected with the highest number of votes, after the winner, has the duty of holding that Party accountable. We’re focused on the Opposition that’s more experienced and has more expertise by virtue of longevity and professional make up…which we prefix with ‘Seasoned‘…PNC-R.
To us, theirs is no option but an obligation. And though it may not have the curated repository of policy papers and referential material to go by, it has veteran politicians, several lawyers and the valiance of Desmond Hoyte.
Duty commands that they reactivate a Management System and not yield to the calls of one person. What exists is the passive compliance of the collective, a mix of talent and professions that subvert their reputations and professions to the ‘bluff kit’ of a proven loser.
The ‘Tragedy of Subverted Talent’ – reads like the title of a middle school play for the nuns. The reality is much more raw. Competent and qualified professionals are willingly acting as the background chorus for a blatant bluff.
And by this, they are dismantling the once formidable architecture of the PNC which was forged, more than constructed, into the power house that is its reputation.
The Herdsmanston Accord is a national example of what knowledge- driven dedication can produce. It shows what political duty, aided by the components and aspects of particular professions, can yield for an electorate. It affirms that integrity at the helm can motivate sustained anti-sentiment against political decisions and deliver for the disaffected.
It is a manifestation of what the Founders commissioned when they assembled the first planks for the Party. Its rigor, structural warfare and statecraft can be traced back to the personalities of the founding members and their hard fought battles to establish and functionalize the entity.
The trajectory shows that institutional building was not a peaceful process but it was not a lazy or irretrievably splintered one, either. There were natural differences – coming from separate parties to coalesce under one. But there were brave politicians who knew to tell leaders when they were missing the mission. That continuous right-sizing gave us the Hoyte Offensive.
The current state of the PNCR does not even remotely resemble its blue print. Its politicians have to return to the business of being brave enough to tell their leader that he’s failing. They have to be ambitious enough to know that their experience and expertise is what got them elected and by people who look to them for rescue from their unfortunate lot.
The situation report is ‘political urgency amidst institutional decay’.
The measure of success of the Seasoned Opposition, PNC-R, would be more than surviving its failing leader.
It would be surviving the judgment of those voters who trusted its promise of a better life.
One haunting aphorism that prevails in the political arena is “politics is not a game of glamor or survival, its a ledger of human cost”.
Rest well with that.
