THE POLITICAL REALITIES

THEY SEEM to be doing their politics in the ‘sixes’. We refer to the confirmation that Robert Corbin and five others have been nominated for the leadership of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR), followed by the earlier report that six “parties” have joined “forces” to wage a campaign against the Government. The weapons of the six “parties” will be the standard propaganda diet of “human rights abuses” and “racial discrimination” now to be fuelled with strident allegations of a link between the Government and drug-trafficking dealer, Roger Khan, as being reported out of a current court case in the United States of America.

If some find both of the “sixes” developments amusing, then they need to separate the internal PNCR leadership battle from the opportunistic coming together of six parties (if all could truthfully be so categorised) for the purpose of engaging in political strife to disturb the stability and social and economic progress of Guyana.

This stability was valiantly fought for by a mix of courageous and sustained public cooperation, and the bravery and dedication of the disciplined forces (police and army) when this nation was being terrorised into fear by well-armed and financed criminal networks, some with known links to the political opposition.

There must be NO return to this threat to law and order, to the blood-letting mayhem and the poisoning of harmonious relations among the people of this nation, currently struggling against the odds at a most challenging global financial and economic crisis with devastating consequences for some of Guyana’s CARICOM partners.

Apart from the PNCR and its primary challenger, the Alliance for Change (AFC), the four other parties to have expediently teamed up, under the guise of launching a public “education campaign” to expose the government, are those simply scrambling for survival. Two of them have long been thought to be in a state of coma, or dead.  

We await to see how, within a fortnight of the PNCR’s 16th biennial delegates congress, scheduled to begin on August 21, these “six parties” plan to carry out their so-called “education campaign” against a legitimate, democratic and people-oriented government.

Or whether, in their political desperation to attract “popular support,” they resort to the old politics of division, disorder and destruction.  

Already, a few of the ambitious challengers to Corbin for party leadership are rationalising their closing of ranks in a show of anti-government ‘unity’. What the incumbents and challengers for the leadership structure of the PNCR have in common is their passion for power to replace the present government. 

They do not share a philosophy of democratic governance, or reveal a shared interest in an enlightened alternative economic development programme to what the PPP/C has been able to pursue since electoral democracy returned to Guyana in 1992 and led to the transformation of the social economic landscape after 28 years of corrupt, divisive and dictatorial rule by the PNC.

Robert Corbin’s recent dangerous remark that the Guyana Government should “pay attention to events in Honduras” following the military-linked coup against a lawful government, may come to haunt him and his party.

He and his challengers for PNCR leadership should carefully monitor the attitudes and pronouncements of the United States government, as well as those of Latin America and the Caribbean, to better understand the political realities of our time, and avoid engaging in wishful thinking.

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