WHILE THE Opposition People’s National Congress (PNC) and Alliance For Change (AFC) keep burying their heads in the sand to avoid acknowledging Guyana’s continuing social and economic advancement, recurring evidence of general achievements under the People’s Progressive Party-led Government remains reminders to childish politicking by these two parties.
With dissolution of the 10th Parliament, and failure by the AFC and APNU (A Partnership for National Unity), to succeed in their tortuous efforts for a pre-election anti-PPP/C front to achieve state power, it may well be fictitious to propagate the notion of APNU as being a broad-based “unity” coalition. The PNC, yes. APNU no.
The reality, after all, is that apart from the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), a once dynamic vehicle for national change, but now a pathetic replica of its former self, APNU is today nothing more than the reformed PNC that had failed to win the November 2011 general elections.
Driven, like the AFC, by political bitterness and no practical initiatives to inspire bi-partisan cooperation in Guyana’s national interest, the PNC’s version of a “partnership” movement in 2015 is nothing but a mirage.
For its part, the AFC, an “alliance” that got stuck in the proverbial mud from the outset by personal antipathies and political infantilism, became a victim of petty politics with boastful claims about its popularity as it wrapped itself as a serious alternative to the PPP/C and PNC.
For all its own weaknesses, or shortcomings, the PNC had sought to avoid repeating the constant political errors of the AFC, while both prolonged their varied notions of “unity” during sessions of the now dissolved 10th Parliament.
Since then, APNU’s chairman, David Granger, who continues to lead the PNC amid lingering internal squabbles in some regions and among some party decision-makers, has come to recognise that there seems no chance of a pre-election Opposition front against the PPP/C.
Nevertheless, he and the PNC are yet to part with a still lingering political posture that borders that of the AFC constantly blind-siding itself to recurring successes in various development projects that point to the ongoing economic, social and cultural progress of Guyana.
Latest example of these achievements, with job creation and maintenance of the rule of law would be next month’s ceremonial opening of the very modern US$58.9 million ‘five star’ Marriott Hotel, as reported in our yesterday’s edition.