THE main opposition party, the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) is gearing up to announce another ‘grand’ coalition party to contest the polls slated for this year.
The PNCR, operating clandestinely, has managed so far to keep most of its operations quiet and out of the public limelight, only giving the media bits and crumbs of information in the form of press releases and photo ‘ops’.
It has been hosting its media conferences and social media programmes weekly to keep the so-called ‘pressure’ up on the alleged governance blunders of the ruling party, while continuing to hide its hand of political cards that have to do with the grand coalition it is seeking to form.
The PNCR is also trying to hide the internal rifts and problems that it is facing daily. It knows that if these problems get into the mainstream media, they would affect the party’s chances of forming a broad opposition coalition. Apart from that, it can shatter its supporters’ confidence levels in the party and its ability to win the upcoming elections.
The truth is that the PNCR is not fooling anyone who understands its history in politics, and who understands elections in Guyana. The party is neither smart nor politically intelligent as to the way it is going about this idea of forming a grand coalition. It is panicking, desperate, and showing all of its political cards with all of this secrecy, forced meetings, PR stunts, and photo ‘ops’. The public could see behind the façade of opposition unity that the PNCR is holding up. The public already knows that the PNCR is having serious problems with getting the opposition stakeholders to trust it with power again.
Its behaviour during the APNU+AFC coalition was shameful on many levels because it disrespected, undermined, and sidelined its partners. Its history with the formation of alliances in Guyana from the United Force Party (TUF) in the 1960s to the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and Alliance For Change (AFC) is replete with truthful stories and tales of deception and highhandedness that ultimately led to its dissolution, or partners walking away.
Firstly, the PNCR is a major party showing worrying signs of decline. Nobody wants to play with it; nobody wants to lose with it because nobody will trust it.
Unless the party changes its ways and modus operandi, it will always struggle with coalition politics in Guyana. Its experiment with the TUF, APNU, and AFC was close but failed. It will keep trying and fail to broker a healthy relationship with other opposition parties in Guyana because of its lack of conflict resolution skills and desire to always dominate the leadership of this grand coalition.
This is why the party is having problems with the AFC. Its current leader, Aubrey Norton will not allow the AFC or any other political or non-political personality to lead. While there is a wealth of reasons to support Norton’s position, the PNCR will never learn the art of contentment, trust, leadership, coalitions and negotiation. The PNCR does not care about the people and their needs; it cares about itself. It puts self-preservation and ego above the people that support the party and coalition.
That is why nobody will play at this point, and so it seems determined that opposition parties must play by the PNCR rules or not play at all.
Secondly, this show of unity and strength by the PNCR is really showing the extent to which the opposition parties are isolating and hurting it. The fact that PNCR has to be engaged with these smaller parties is pathetic and unfortunate.
The leader has allowed a serious party that has a strong constituent to meet and lock hands with these fly-by-night and one-man paper parties publicly under the guise of the PNCR searching and forming a grand coalition. It is disgraceful. These parties do not have a base or constituent. Most Guyanese have never heard of their activism on either the political or social front. And, they do not have any idea about politics and policies but Norton feels comfortable to brandish them in public, boosting their one-off claim to fame while the PNCR name slides into the gutter. Not attacking the size of the political parties, but where did they come from, represent, or stand for?
This is not real. A responsible PNCR would keep its meetings with these smaller and weaker political entities away from the media and public, if not hidden. This is not a broad and grand coalition; this is a coalition of nothingness. They offer nothing but making up numbers.
Despite this, the PNCR wants to trick and distract the public from its avoidance of dealing with the tougher problem of facing the AFC. A meeting is planned for later this month to review its partnership and alliance, according to sources.
The meeting will occur closer to the Valentine’s Day accord signed originally in 2015 and renegotiated in March 2020. If all goes as the PNCR plans, there will be a new accord with the AFC in time for the 2025 elections. This will be the real icing on its cake, and the grand coalition will be formed, but who will lead?
Thirdly, Norton insists that the PNCR which he leads is unified and strong. Never mind he had to rig an entire party congress and wash; no, dashed all of his adversaries from the PNCR Executive and Central Committee. He has been busy fixing this badly fractured party, which knows who it wants to lead it.
It keeps throwing Norton out, because Norton’s wild and dangerous ideas, and obsession with the presidency but he, like PNCR keeps reinventing himself and has capitalised on a period of weakness to get back into the party’s leadership. And this time, he has his knees on the throat of the PNCR and will not lose it.
That aside before the PNCR thinks about forming a grand coalition, it should seek to resolve the issues internally first. There are too many cracks, factions and disunity that cause the opposition party to appear on the decline. Forbes Burnham’s party is not itself. The wind of change is engulfing the party but it is being suppressed and held down by Norton and his minions.
Where is this dynamic political party that used to be the PNCR? Where is the unity, comradery, and love that could see it mount a formidable challenge to the ruling party for governance? Norton must not be satisfied with just saying that the PNCR is unified. He must know that it is. He must have a conviction that, for example, Roysdale Forde, Amanza Desir, David Granger, Volda Lawrence and other factions are unified not just for elections but in the party.
They must be ostracized from the leadership of the party because of their differing opinions about the way the PNCR is handling matters both internally and externally. They must be included and given their seat at the table before the PNCR looks at joining the grand coalition. Handle matters at home before handling matters outside and in the country.
Finally, if the PNCR wants to be taken seriously, it must act like a major party in politics. It must be mature and handle the business of coalition politics with honesty, integrity, accountability and transparency. It must also have respect if it wants to be respected. Trust, good faith and understanding are the cornerstone of coalition politics.
These politicians must have good conflict resolution skills or they would die a hard death. The PNCR must change its crookish, devilish and power-hungry ways for this grand coalition to really matter in the political scene. It managed to achieve power once but had no tools to maintain the power. Accountability means accepting that PNCR failed badly in handling the coalition and failed the country as a result. Transparency means, in this case, accepting the many blunders in government that cheated Guyanese out of millions and five years of what could have been the beginning of “the golden years” of the country.
Both mean accepting that the PNCR rigged elections in past and attempted to rig elections in 2020, offering Guyanese and all would-be coalition partners an apology. Then, the AFC must apologize for its role in the process before any serious attempt again at forming this grand coalition.
But that will not happen. It’s anyone’s guess why. Ego and pride. Desperation will turn men into mice, and Saints into devils. Silly season? This season will turn men into something that they are not. They will sell the souls to the highest bidder for a chance at power and wealth. Trust and believe it when the PNCR, APNU and AFC form their grand coalition or PNCR, WPA and other small non-entities. Knowing that history is cyclical, Guyanese cannot afford to be duped three times.