GUYANA’S POLITICS OF SURPRISES
Elisabeth Harper
Elisabeth Harper

(By Rickey Singh in Bridgetown)

AS GUYANA prepares for a snap general election this coming May 11, there have already been two startling political surprises within the past fortnight—both occurring as Guyanese were merrily involved with ‘Mashramani’, their version of annual carnival celebrations this month.First surprise was an announcement of the formation of a secretly worked out arrangement between the main opposition People’s National Congress and its junior partner, Alliance For Change (AFC), for a pre-election unity front against the governing People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C).

Prime Minister Samuel Hinds
Prime Minister Samuel Hinds

The anti-PPP electoral front provides for leader of the PNC and chairman of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) –predominantly the PNC with a few miniscule parties— with the retired Brigadier of the Guyana Defence Force, David Granger, retaining the position as Presidential candidate—as he was for the 2011 general elections.
The surprise from the Opposition camp was the choice of the earlier announced AFC’s Presidential candidate, Moses Nagamootoo, as Prime Ministerial running mate to David Granger.
Nagamootoo is a former long-serving PPP member who, like the AFC’s first and current leader, Khemraj Ramjattan, had crossed the floor in Parliament to form their own party—which started with three MPs and moved to seven over three national elections and now the surprise of a Granger-led anti-PPP electoral front with the PPP-defector Nagamootoo.
However, the really big surprise for the combined anti-PPP election front and the country at large was the PPP/C’s disclosure of its woman Prime Ministerial running mate to incumbent President, Donald Ramotar–Elisabeth Harper. She is a career public servant with recognised experiences as well in the diplomatic service.
The surprising prime ministerial running mate for President Ramotar turned out to be the first woman non-PPP member to be unanimously nominated by the party/s major decision-making body, the Central Committee, since the party’s return to state power in October 1992 with the end to successively rigged elections for a quarter century under governance by the PNC.
While Harper, currently Director General of the Foreign Affairs Ministry and accredited ambassador to various CARICOM member countries, is preparing herself for the entirely new political role as Prime Minister—should the PPP/C attain a sixth consecutive term in government—as it expects—the opposition combination of PNC and AFC are surprisingly quite critical of her and contending that her new role suggests “political desperation” on the part of the governing party.
Harper’s choice as Prime Ministerial running mate has resulted from the incumbent Prime Minister, Samuel Hinds, also a non –PPP member, bowing out from that office which he has successively held under changing PPP/C-administrations from 1992 to the present.
(Editor’s note: Prior to publication of this column, Harper resigned on Tuesday as Director General of the Foreign Affairs Ministry. This analysis appears courtesy the ‘Trinidad Express’ as published yesterday.)
Rickey Singh is a Guyana-born noted Caribbean journalist based in Barbados

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