AT the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) rally at Kitty on Sunday, President Bharrat Jagdeo made two very important announcements – one is the November 28 poll date and the other is the deferring of CNS 6 television station suspension to December 1. With respect to the former, all speculation and anxiety surrounding elections have been brought to an end and all political parties have a clear timetable in which to get organized and mobilized for the political contest, as Guyanese strive to sustain and deepen their country’s democracy.
From what has been seen so far in the elections campaign, some political parties appear to be unprepared for the contest as their level of activity has been noticeably low which is quite uncharacteristic of political parties in the midst of an election season.
As such, the supporters of these political parties must be in a quandary as to what is happening. Or is it a case of these parties already conceding defeat and, therefore, are only hustling to see how many seats they can muster and get into Parliament?
If the answer is in the affirmative, then these parties are being very unfair to their respective constituencies, because it means that their political leaders are only using them to further selfish agendas.
Against this backdrop, supporters of these political parties should rethink their political stance and consider whether they are supporting the right political party.
As regards the deferring of CNS 6 television suspension to December 1, the government has made a sagacious decision, because it was clear that the political opposition was bent on using the suspension as a political football and not as the cause of war but the occasion for the war, in a similar fashion as the Labour Relations Bill was used by the political opposition in the 1960s.
So such tactics are not new to the political landscape of this country. In more recent times, the ethnicity of the late former President Mrs. Janet Jagan was used as a launching pad to create mayhem in this country.
One of the major contentions of the opposition was that the government was blocking off the station because of the elections and that the elections would be an unfair contest as there would not have been a level playing field. And, already, there were calls from the opposition to boycott the polls.
On the other hand, the government contended that the opposition was using the issue to boycott the polls because they know they would lose at the polls. So the boycott would have been used as a ‘smoke screen’ to discredit the validity of the polls.
The argument of the opposition has now been dismantled by the deferral of the suspension date and it would be interesting to see what they would have to say on the matter now.
It is only hoped that no other spanner will be thrown into the works. What is at stake here is the will of the people and, regardless from which political camp people come from, preserving the will of the people is paramount to any narrow and selfish interests.
Like in any other contest, inevitably there will be winners and losers but at the end of the day, it is the interest of the country that comes first. In this context, no one is actually a loser because everyone has a contribution to make towards the development of the country.
Elections merely help to define the various roles of everyone and, therefore, is not the beginning and end of the developmental process. On the contrary, it is just an initial step in that process.