THE democratically-elected Executive President of Guyana, Donald Ramotar, has found it necessary to alert this nation to the dangers of what he has identified as a  “dictatorship of one” in our Parliament.His warning has come against the backdrop of continuing political manoeuvring in and out of the National Assembly by the two opposition parties, APNU and AFC that are designed to frustrate the will of the electorate to satisfy an egos-driven political power game.
The President, in reiterating his commitment, as earlier made known to the opposition parties, for an independent forensic audit of the results of the November 28, 2011 elections, has stated that the current Tenth Parliament “will be characterised as a dictatorship of one” with both the APNU and AFC manipulating their one-vote plurality in the 65-member Assembly to be “uncooperative and disruptive”.
He has also stated that there were “several instances of malpractice between strategically placed GECOM officials, who infiltrated the system, and APNU, and I am confident that the PPP/C did have a decisive majority with more than 50 percent of the national votes at the last elections…”
For this and other reasons, said the President, he had informed the two opposition parties that they should agree with the PPP/C for an independent forensic audit of the results of last year’s poll. However, this proposal has been ignored, although he had made it quite clear that he was prepared to call fresh elections should the forensic audit results make this necessary.
The President has catalogued instances of how, together, the APNU and AFC appeared bent on making a caricature of the democratic process while always shouting about “unity” and heaping blame on the government, even when they fail to respond to cooperation initiatives from his administration.
As he noted at a media briefing on Friday: “It is rather unfortunate that after all its entire attempt to block a re-verification of the election results, APNU continues to paint itself as a victim in this process…What it has also done is to bring into question the integrity and competence of its very own supporters and polling agents who were either scrutineers and or counting agents…”
As Finance Minister, Dr Ashni Singh gets ready to present his new budget later this week; there would be more focus on the disturbing politicking of APNU and AFC in what President Ramotar has identified as the “dictatorship of one in parliament”. Instead, that is, of a desired principled tripartite approach by the three parties that respectively won 32 (PPP/C); 26 (APNU) and seven (AFC) seats, with the governing party securing the single largest bloc of votes.
So, what’s the way forward? Tripartite approach or ‘dictatorship of one’?