Dear Editor

SO I have finally got to sit down; let’s talk. Before we take a closer look at some of the factors we should have regard to following the outcome of the motion of no-confidence against the coalition government, I should hasten to urge those who are doing it to desist from hurling racial insults at Charrandas Persaud, and to desist from suggesting his life should be taken. His stance, principled or not, should never provoke this kind of reaction. I hasten also to urge our wider society to shy away from our usual practice of bashing our Afro and Indo-Guyanese counterparts. We will continue to perish as a nation and grow in brotherhood at the slowest pace for as long as we use the racist thermometer to test the temperature of every political disquiet in our country.

Let’s start with the coalition government before we invite Mr. Persaud under our microscope. I have said a few years ago that we harbour misguided optimism by supposing that the coalition government would be suddenly competent when the same composition of core leaders made for an incompetent opposition. Any such logic is offensive to common sense. I have said further that the core players comprising the coalition government showed no evidence, while in opposition, that their socialisation is one of governance. Opposition is just a tidy expression for a ‘government in waiting’. As a government in waiting, the psychological, sociological, ideological and practical preparedness must always be for governance. This makes for a competent opposition; and for a ready government when the opportunity is arrested. The conduct of the coalition government since the assumption of office has not inspired in me any modification of this view. And the fact that it professes ignorance that one of its ranks would have defected, even in the face of presumably being warned days ahead of this likelihood, adds to this view.

The brief tenure of the coalition government has been characterised by successive dilemmas; dilemmas that have been handled badly by the public relations machinery of the coalition government. Dilemmas which have been consistently exploited by the opposition, and which ultimately culminated in a vote of no-confidence in the government. This is not to say that the coalition government has not made significant inroads into cleaning up the mess left in the wake of 23 years of PPP rule; but even the progress the coalition government has not been marketed with the requisite persistence and intensity for sustained public awareness. The coalition’s anorexic one-seat majority imposed upon it the obligation to never lose its campaign momentum. It was that momentum which rendered Jagdeo irrelevant in 2015 and consequently excited a change of the guard to the coalition. It is that loss of momentum and, what appears to be an obscurity of its mandate, that has landed the coalition where it now sits. Jagdeo and the PPP have never stopped campaigning. They have never stopped seeing themselves as the government.

Let us now look at Charrandas Persaud. Persons are hailing him as a hero. He is not. Persons are praising him for, according to him, letting his conscience prevail. They should not. Mr. Persaud has done nothing heroic or nothing that should be celebrated. What he has told the nation is that he sat in parliament for three years absent his conscience; that for three years he has acted inconsistently with the interest of the Guyanese people by voting in favour of policies that affect their lives, and which policies he was, in principle, against. Mr. Persaud, as a parliamentarian, took an oath that he ‘will bear true and faithful allegiance to the People of Guyana that [he] will faithfully execute  the office of [parliamentarian] without fear or favour, affection or ill will….’ What Mr. Persaud told the nation is that he has for the past three years blatantly disregarded his oath to serve the People of Guyana. Mr. Persaud cites the fact that he is a lawyer; a lawyer’s oath is not radically different from the one quoted here.

If Mr. Persaud had been voting contrary to his conscience for the three plus years he served as a parliamentarian then his disquiet with the coalition government, and more particularly the AFC, has been from the inception of the coalition government. One would imagine that Mr. Persaud should have taken sustained objections with his party counterparts. And if this produces no change of their conduct for the better, then resign from the party and declare publicly what has occasioned his resignation. What Mr. Persaud has done instead is to wait for the most decisive voting occasion to register in a grand way, without giving his party notice, his discontent with the party and with the government. This is not heroic, this is deceptive and calculated only to tilt the balance of power in favour of the PPP, the same PPP which excesses, according to him, catapulted him into politics. What has changed about the PPP, in his estimation, that justifies the risk of putting the PPP back into office when the economic stakes are higher and the public purse to be exploited will be prospectively larger? Why haven’t the contents of the letter he has written or the details revealed in his interview been discussed with the AFC or the coalition government ahead of voting on the motion? Why did he sit there silently when enquiries were made about who felt the motion carried merit? Why ready himself to resign only upon his decision to shift the balance of power?  And this is what we call heroic? We need to do better than this.

Just in case you have missed it, Mr. Persaud condemns the utterances of Volda Lawrence, and rightly so, but goes on to chastise even her apology. And still has the temerity to stand there after three plus years of acting inconsistently with the collective interests of the Guyanese people he took an oath to serve, relying on his reunion with his conscience. Mr. Persaud uses as one of the bases of his decision, the displacement of sugar workers, workers whom he represented as being settled with their compensation, while not accounting for what has caused the demise of the sugar estates. I am suspicious of any man who says he cannot be bought, while simultaneously professing that he has sold his conscience consistently for three plus years.

I will offer my views as to where do we go from here in a subsequent post.

Regards,
Ronald J. Daniels