Don’t blame Afro Guyanese and suggest that they are so easily manipulated that they are used as “Pawns in an Indian Power Struggle”.
Don’t oversimplify a multi ethnic, political, landscape and reduce a whole race to subservience because the politics that’s supposed to serve their best interests is missing….and not only in action.
We’ll admit to PNC brand bias.
We’ll, simultaneously, point to vendetta politics from the ruling party – still prosecuting successive generations of the 1968 Burnham era, in perpetual penalty for the grievances of that time.
Burnham died in 1985. For the 29 years the PPP has been ruling, their tour of duty has been one of retribution…is collective opinion.
Census data, the story teller of the nation’s inhabitants and its systems’ capacity to service each resident at every level, remains conveniently in-precise, touting a 3 year lag for “accurate adjustments”.
Guyana’s compliance with the reporting recommendations of Financial Lenders and World Organizations seem not to comport with their models.
And this allows for the under reporting of critical survival/living– data of select groups. All of this supports our assertion that politics “is missing and not only in action”.
We’ll roll past the demotion of APNU and its previous 31seat, single Opposition tenure held for decades, pre Norton .
We’ll skip its failure to ever extrapolate data for side -by -side progression/regression comparison of the fortunes of Afro Guyanese.
The Party has a fair share of professionals. We understand the ‘unfriendly’ environment and the blockades to required information.
But publicly available economic data creates a basis for approximating information, which is always better than no information for constituents.
So, let’s look at the Government reported employment numbers that are available on many international data bases. We’ll cross reference that with its routinely delayed Census which is the only report that shows ethnicity.
Because we’re neither demographic analysts, labor economists nor survey statisticians, we would just do the basic solving for X we learned in Guyana’s classrooms…giving each variable a letter.
And this can provide– as closely as possible for general information– details on employment by gender and every other category aligned with employment and wages, as needed.
Fact is, people vote because they trust politicians to provide the pathway to perpetual and escalating levels of improved living, using the power of the people collective.
Food, Housing and Employment are their nonnegotiable baselines. And any astute politician would be focusing on these touch points.
We might recall the Feed Clothe and House the Nation campaign under the PNC Founder, Burnham. We revisit it to lock into place why people go to the polls. They cast their ballots where promises directly answer their most fundamental human needs.
And because we’re addressing the reprehending finger- pointing of this Pawn Accuser, we’ll go back to when Working People’s Alliance–WPA– Party’s slogan was ‘Bread and Justice’.
It was the dichotomy of the cry for bare essentials and the dignity of human rights entrusted in the vehicle of politics, driven by politicians.
The point is, this politician comes from a movement which validates the essentiality of messaging and politicians being seen as genuine because they are working, strategizing and delivering.
Voters stay with parties that work for them. It’s the fundamental law of survival and the precise purpose of politics.
This brings us back to his assertion that Afro Guyanese are pawns because of some predatorial victory by dueling Indian parties that won them over.
When economic needs overwhelm ideology because it’s neither feeding, clothing nor housing the voter, the primal instinct is to take shelter where needs are met.
The surge of the Working Peoples Alliance –WPA –should be the pilot here.
Another ringing WPA slogan comes to mind, one that he ‘Pawn’ accuser would be more than familiar with… ‘People Power No Dictator’
It was the cry that catapulted WPA from movement to political contender.
We invoke it, not because of comparative irony within the Parliamentary Body of which this WPA representative is a member.
We do so to spotlight the reality of lower returns driven by the ineffective politicking/strategizing, this politician has -apparently- settled for.
The ‘Dictator’ slogan is explicit, with each word making its statement. So, there’s no need to flesh it out. And with those two slogans charting his political direction, he seems to have taken the wrong turn at the junction of ‘…No dictator’.
His skill set outpaces that of his Political Leader, as his résumé testifies. And we won’t repeat the rejection at the polls and the decimation of the Opposition, lest we revisit the agony.
But this Leader of the WPA has been undermining his ‘…No dictator’ orientation since he was selected for Parliament…by pact…he boasts.
We’re not blaming sycophancy, co-optation or any relative of the two.
What we are baffled by is his coy compliance as he watches his Leader’s irrefutable incompetence dismantle the PNC.
He has to know that without PNC there is no APNU, which gives Working Peoples Alliance, WPA, its life.
We won’t ask for its membership strength. No need for revelations that may be unflattering.
Our issue is with him being a Member of Parliament and a blind supporter of Aubrey Norton whose inadequacies are as irrefutable as they are branding.
We understand the principle of leadership and the deference that’s shown to the person wearing that title. But there’s a difference between deference, acquiescence and sucking up.
He, like many others in APNU, qualified through academic studies and practicing professions, has taken up residence in the underbelly of their leader.
Whether it’s his Party or not, his silence on Norton’s canceling PNC’s Congress is convenient blindness to political impropriety which undermines WPA’s anti-authoritarianism mantra.
Status of ‘Office and Duty of it’ …a management maxim, is embodied here.
They have to know, too, the label Leader, when referring to Norton, is charitable, often effigy, evidenced by election results.
This brings us to the phenomenon ‘Cowardice of the Competent’ which resides where ambitions outpace rectitude.
The Party—APNU mounted squarely on PNC—with all of its qualified professionals, seems to have made an unholy agreement to pretend that leadership is merely a word, unintentionally adjacent to politics with zero relation; let alone executive responsibilities.
And amidst this leadership paralysis, this WPA voice offers his supposed deduction as some nugget of wisdom– blaming Afro-Guyanese as pawns who have fallen victim to dueling Indian parties.
APNU’s is an obvious, almost deliberate deficit of strategy, parked at the myopic, one dimensional, ‘blame the government’, go-to reflex.
This would be a good time to ask them why they are so actively engaged in alleging Party poaching when they are the least attractive alternative.
That is the forensic challenge that should be answered.
Maybe, we’ll learn how enamored they are with the title, Member of Parliament, and the moral lowering they’ll engage to keep it.
We may learn if there’s a plan for them to dig themselves out of the basement of Parliament.
But as of now, they seem comfortable, formidably, bringing up the rear with parliamentary participation that barely marks them present.
The contrast between constitutional duty and political careerism, as it dis-serves constituents, is a breach of trust.
So is lazy representation of the People’s National Congress which has been diminished by poor stewardship and an abandonment by those who should have moral compulsion to keep it.
Its extended neglect is a gift to the other original Party which is, undoubtedly, celebrating how little they had to do to get what they always wanted. It’s the kind of tactical humiliation avoided, even in mock battle.
We’ll continue to fight for PNC’s representation by calling on all who still have opportunity to save it.
We know we represent those who walked before us and saw the social and political redemption it offered the ethnic group diminished by societal practice because their social start was enslavement– the brutal reality of their inheritance.
The fight to save the PNC is a fight for the very dignity of the people it was built to redeem.
And that is a mandate we’re not ready to abandon.
