On Shame and Opportunity
Kaieteur News – Six months ago, Justin Gest, a political scientist at George Mason University in the United Sates, writing in the highly regarded journal, ‘Foreign Policy’, made the case a three-month long attempt by David Granger’s administration to challenged the will of the people and colluded with elements in GECOM to steal the elections was a potential port of what U.S. citizens could expect from the Trump administration later in the year.
“A country has reached a constitutional crisis,” Gest wrote, “There is a dispute over the validity of her national election… However, the chief executive is refusing to give up. Instead, he accuses the opposition of stuffing ballot boxes and fraudulent voting in several electoral regions. He orders the electoral commission to recount the votes and, when the initial result is confirmed, the chief government elections officer invalidates hundreds of thousands of votes. The incumbent declares his second preference. You could be forgiven for projecting in this scenario your worst fears about President Donald Trump and the US elections in November. Many pundits have already played this scenario in the press. But this is not the United States – at least not yet. ”
As the events of recent weeks have shown, Gest’s predictions came – not surprisingly to any astute observer of the politics of both countries. Going forward, he is hopeful that today’s editorial in ‘The Economist’, written about the United States and appropriately titled, “The Shame and the Opportunity”, can provide some lessons for the opposition here now, these words specifically:
“Stand back from the nonsense about stolen elections, and the scale of Republican failure will come under Mr. Trump obviously. After winning the White House and retaining majority in Congress in 2016, defeat in Georgia means the party lost it all four years later… Usually, when a political party suffers a reversal on such a scale it ‘ n learn some lessons and come back stronger … Reinvention will be harder this time. ”
However, the prognosis at present is not promising. In his latest foray into madness and senility, Mr. Granger’s current posture of machinery is an appeal to the Joseph Biden administration to work with them to remove the PPP / C from power. This utter absurdity of the country’s main opposition would have to be based on a reality where Biden will not only be aware of the internationally condemned rigging that Granger sought but where there was in fact no bipartisan condemnation of Granger’s anti-democratic . antics by members of the US Congress. Indeed, one of the abominable failures of APNU + AFC’s political machinery was its attempts to use Washington lobbying company JJ&B LLC to try to convince US lawmakers to support its attempt to rig the election, resulting in nothing more significant than a clumsy half . by New York Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, a man already covered by headline participation in an APNU + AFC victory rally in 2015. In contrast, several powerful Senate and Congress committees joined the US State Department to condemn the crazy criminality that was happening. here in Guyana. If anything, given that Biden has faced his own version of Granger in Mr Trump, the Coalition will have no friends in the new US government, especially if they continue the farce of claiming electoral fraud. Guyanese is still waiting for Mr Granger to come out of wherever he is hiding to present the Poll Statements he claimed he had in his possession which he showed, in line with the corrupt figures of Clairmont Mingo, after winning elections last year . In addition, Biden is now called upon to remove the lawfully elected Ali administration in the face of absolute volte from the principled view of the Granger administration last year that the United States needs to stay out of Guyana’s sovereign affairs.
So it’s unclear why, in light of these very basic and shocking realities, the National People’s Congress continues to hold this macabre theater of cognitive dissonance, as if we were all somehow transported over the year last back to the 1970s, the height of Burnhamite dictatorship, including virtual virtual control over the dissemination of information to the public.
What is clear, however, is that with the PNC suffering from what is essentially Trump leadership and all its associated pathologies under Granger, the burden of seizing the opportunity for reform falls , in the political world at least, directly to the Progressive People ‘s Party and the single seat joy list. The problem is that it doesn’t matter whether the current incumbent has really embarked on a Road to Damascus journey away from the hegemonic excesses of his not so distant past – he needs credible dual leadership to reform the political system as a whole, and this cannot be done if the Opposition continues to operate within the bounds of alternate reality, with the tragi-comic, manic, regressive fever dream being produced by Guyana’s own shameless Oz Green Wizard .
Given that her potential political allies in the Alliance for Change and whatever remains of APNU share the essential qualities of the Hungry Ghost and the Hungry Lion, it leaves no less than PNC Chairman Volda Lawrence – as long as that she survives her current time in court. accusations of electoral fraud – to be the Dorothy who leads the Opposition and by stretching its political base back to some reality. In preparation for her party’s national congress, Lawrence, who clearly won the Chair in 2018, needs to challenge Granger for the leadership on an agenda of accepting the will of the people and a program for credible, not funny, opposition to the governing party . .
For its part, that governing party, even as it needs to exercise zero tolerance for opportunistic attacks on the legality of its mandate, must create a framework that incorporates reasonable engagement by the political opposition for the benefit of all people Guyana. President Irfaan Ali, having secured a strong mandate for leadership, needs to be prepared to transform this country’s political system to stop the kind of shameful actions that fell upon us last year.