ANOTHER AMUSING dimension has been added to the ongoing political manoeuvrings by the opposition parties, the PNCR and AFC in particular, in their desperate efforts to forge an anti-PPP alliance for next year’s general elections with hopes of forming a new government.
It is the right of all parties competing for state power to forge alliances they think to be in their own interest. The current scenarios in the camps of both the main opposition PNCR and the minority AFC, however, reveal a combination of confusion of ideas and political opportunism that could only get worse in the months ahead.
First, there were the meetings of amusement involving representatives of the AFC (minus Khemraj Ramjattan) and others (including Winston Murray) with a Barbadian political activist, Hartley Henry, who markets himself as a ‘strategist’ in electoral politics.
Then followed a separate meeting with PNC leader, Robert Corbin and others with Henry that generated even more media excitement. Together, they would have been embarrassing for top executives of the PNCR and AFC — both of which have their respective serious internal leadership problems.
For Henry, however, the media reports would have been quite flattering to his ego, since he relishes such attention. The reality is different.
After all, having suffered a humiliating defeat at his first attempt as a candidate for Parliament, he has been steering clear of any further such ventures. Instead, he has opted to sell himself to various ruling and opposition parties as a ‘strategist’ for electoral victories.
Naturally, cases of failures are quickly rationalised, if not ignored, in preference for the few examples where changes, or retention of governments needed NO imported ‘experts’ from within CARICOM or outside of this region. The specific cases will come later.
Henry’s right to canvas employment as a ‘political strategist’ is not an issue. He can enjoy himself in Guyana, a country with a most liberal immigration policy under a government whose commitment to the major policies and goals are quite well known, even to its domestic opponents who, in any case, hardly show any serious interest in the programmes of CARICOM.
More of this argument later. For now, we wish to point to the second instance of political amusement in the ongoing ‘alliance saga’ involving the PNCR and AFC and the Bajan ‘strategist’.
It is the surprising claim made by PNCR leader, Robert Corbin at a media conference on Friday, that the PPP/C seems to be “in panic” over the possibility of an apposition alliance coming to power, as happened in Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.
The PPP/C administration of President Bharrat Jagdeo, and  the PPP separately, are quite capable of dealing with this claim by Mr. Corbin. First, he needs to remind himself that the objective factors that made democratic changes in both countries referred to simply do NOT prevail in Guyana.
And it is more than laughable for a politician like Corbin, once the Minister of National Mobilisation when the PNC misruled Guyana, to suggest that the Jagdeo administration may be abusing state intelligence resources to influence media coverage of the so-called ‘alliance talks’ that have taken place.
Rather than engaging this kind of ‘panic’ response to media exposures, the PNCR, as well as the AFC, should endeavour to come to terms with their respective internal leadership divisions and avoid the error of engaging in anti-PPP alliance deals behind the backs of their decision-making councils.