WHEN the history of Guyana is properly written, the year 2015 will go down as one of the most significant years in the history of Guyana. It was the year when the Guyanese electorate went against the political grain by electing a majority government that was not the Peoples Progressive Party (PPP).On account of our ethnic voting patterns, the PPP, whose traditional base has been the majority Indian-Guyanese community, had hitherto won all certified free and fair elections since 1955. Even in 2011, when, for the first time, it failed to win a parliamentary majority, the PPP still garnered a large plurality of the vote, which enabled it to retain the powerful presidency. So when that party was relegated to the opposition benches after the May 11, 2015 polls, that relegation represented a break with a six-decade-old tradition.
No doubt, political scientists and historians would soon begin to tease out the factors that caused such a major turn of events. Already, the presumed leader of the PPP, Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo, has identified complacency and arrogance among party and government functionaries as key factors. Others have pointed to government corruption and general mismanagement of the ship of government and state as other contributory factors.
While all of the above may be true, few can doubt that the evolution of Partnership Politics was a major factor, if not THE major factor. Beginning in 2011 with the formation of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) and culminating in 2015 with the APNU+AFC coalition, the electorate was presented with new alternatives at the last two elections. The APNU consolidated the fractured traditional PNC base to mount a serious challenge in 2011, which, along with the AFC’s incursion into the PPP’s traditional base, caused the latter to lose its accustomed parliamentary majority.
The big question in 2015 was whether the APNU and the AFC could together achieve what they did separately in 2011. After much agonizing, they actually did achieve what seemed unachievable a few short years prior.
We believe the significance of the rise of Partnership Politics may be lost on some, particularly on the opposition side. We now have an entire generation of Guyanese who are being socialized in the politics of pluralism, and for whom one-party politics may be a foreign consideration. Mr. Jagdeo may have recognized this when, in his recent assessment of the reasons for the PPP’s loss of the election, he pointed to young PPP supporters who opted for change by voting for the coalition. While he is hoping that that move was temporary, he may well find out that it is more permanent than he thinks.
Can it be that Guyana has finally stumbled upon a political formula that could usher in that long desired plural form of government that reflects the country’s ethnic diversity?
There are many who still speak about the dominance of the PNC in the APNU, and the dominance of the APNU in the coalition as a truism. Such calculations lose sight of the fact that the partnership has begun to take on a life of its own. We believe that the idea and reality of the coalition forged a popular optimism among a majority of the electorate that drove a higher-than-normal turnout to the polls. In other words, the coalition benefited from a spirit of national consensus that is widespread in the country.
The President, in his charge to the coalition’s parliamentarians this past week, declared that the coalition must work. His charge has resonance beyond his side of the aisle. Partnership Politics is never easy, and this governing coalition brings together parties with differing political cultures and ideological groundings. Significantly, it brings together at least two parties that were once political enemies. The presence of a coalition does not mean the absence of tension; the latter is inevitable. Yet, if each party intentionally puts the interests of the entire country ahead of partisan disagreements, the country would inevitably benefit. As Professor Clive Thomas, one of the early architects of the APNU, put it, the test of political substance lies not in how well one works with comrades, but in how well one is able to work with those with whom one does not share a natural political culture.
As Guyana approaches its 50th Independence Anniversary, the spirit of national unity must move beyond convenient rhetoric to find its way into our political behaviour. In this regard, we hope that the PPP’s rejection of President Granger’s offer to join a government of national unity is temporary. We begin 2016 with another political battle looming in the form of the long-awaited local government elections. The parties will again slug it out in the political ring, and both sides will try to make the elections a referendum on each other’s stewardship of the central government. The coalition will contest as a single entity, thus further cementing the partnership as a major tendency going forward.
Whatever happens at those elections, we hope Guyana wins. We cling to the belief that a governance structure and practice grounded in a spirit of national consensus is ultimately our most effective path to the good life for all.
