The President’s speech
President David Granger went to Parliament on Thursday to communicate his vision for the remainder of his office, to lambast the PPP/C for their conduct of the nation’s business during their period in government, and to talk about his desire for inclusionary democracy. For his part, as we reported on Friday, Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo, who along with the parliamentary members of his party had boycotted the speech, was not impressed, describing its tenor as “hostile”.
It was not until the end of his address that Mr Granger had given voice to the hope that the two sides of the National Assembly would find common ground, saying that “The avenues for compromise and consensus remain open”. Mr Jagdeo, however, did not miss the fact that this was located at the conclusion of the Head of State’s presentation and wasted no time deeming it as virtually an “afterthought”, while simultaneously taking a side-swipe at the Minister of Social Cohesion.
Certainly given the structure of the speech, conciliation could hardly have been seen as its main thrust, more particularly since the President spent so much time condemning the previous administration virtually on all fronts – economic, environmental, security and probity in office. His strongest words, however, were reserved for the period he called the ‘troubles’, which he clearly laid at the door of the PPP/C. “The ‘troubles’ will be remembered as the darkest hour in our history,” he said. “It was a time of the un-investigated assassination of a minister; of the investigation into the alleged implication of another minister in the direction of a ‘death squad;’ of the alleged implication of yet another minister in the acquisition of a computer to track the telephone communication and location of adversaries targeted for assassination.”
However, the President opened himself – as the Leader of the Opposition was not slow to point out ‒ to the criticism that he had omitted the other side of the coin, with the criminal elements ensconced in Buxton, whom some labelled ‘freedom fighters’, and who were responsible for the killings of policemen, among many others. The full story of what happened during those “drugfuelled” years has never emerged, and so it remains there lurking in the background to be used by one side or the other as ammunition in their verbal forays against their political adversaries.
It is not that there was not truth embedded in many of Mr Granger’s statements about the PPP/C’s term of office; it is just that like so many
other comments emanating from the politicians in this country, it lacked balance and it lacked a sense of occasion. Parts of it constituted the kind of speech which would normally be made outside the context of Parliament, and perhaps much earlier on in a government’s term. Maybe the Ministry of the Presidency saw this as the opportunity to respond in kind to the opposition’s ever tiresome recitations about the PNCR’s period in office prior to 1992, which are notoriously inaccurate in many respects, not least because they conflate the Burnham period of the late 1970s and ’80s with the Hoyte era from 1985 onwards. Under Hoyte there was decided economic growth from which the incoming government under Cheddi Jagan benefited in 1992, and an altogether more relaxed political and social environment. In addition, as Mr Granger was not slow to point out, nothing compares to the scale of the Skeldon Sugar Factory fiasco under the PPP/C.
It may be, that given the criticism that President Granger had never fully articulated his vision for the future direction of the nation under his watch, that he took this opportunity to try and do so. It was of course, aspirational in nature, and naturally bypassed the enormous constraints which any government faces here in implementing any meaningful idea. “Your government is committed to good governance,” intoned the Head of State to his parliamentarians. If so, his record so far where that is concerned leaves something to be desired, and he would need to take a far stronger line with his ministers and consistently hold them to account – if not prune the complement – in 2017 if his administration is not to go down in history as no better than its predecessor.
In addition, he has shown an unhealthy preference for former army personnel in government, most of whom have no bureaucratic experience whatsoever, and many of whom have no political sense either. It is not a formula designed to translate into practical terms any vision whatsoever. This is not to deny that both the last as well as the present administration have faced a human resource crisis, but this cannot be made good by recourse to those whose only exposure to public office has lain in the military sphere.
What the President did do, which was totally appropriate for the occasion, was lay out his government’s programme for 2017, both in the legislative department and other areas. This is standard procedure in many democracies, and Mr Granger is to be commended for doing it now; hopefully, it will become institutionalized, so to speak. It might be noted that one of the items on his agenda was the convening of a Consultative Constitution Reform Commission. This too is long overdue, although one cannot help but wonder, considering the unhelpful relationship between the two parties not to mention their vested power interests, just how much progress it is going to make.
What the populace has no reason to expect is cooperation and consultation across the aisle of the House for the good of the nation. The will to hang onto power on the one side, and the hunger for power on the other obviate the likelihood of that happening. While some of Mr Jagdeo’s criticisms of Mr Granger’s speech were not misplaced, he still cannot avoid the accusation that he has been on an unrelenting campaign to paint this government as undemocratic and a return to the PNC era, which clearly it is not. This is not to say that it has not relapsed into autocratic stances sometimes, but these fall into the same category as those of Mr Jagdeo’s own administration, which could hardly have been described as democratic in the true sense.
The opposition’s constant refrain about the rigging of the 2015 election is nonsense, and is just repeated as part of the mantra to influence its constituency. It forgets as well, that the PPP/C held a seat in Linden illegally from 2011-15 that rightfully belonged to the AFC. There are too all the other allegations against this government, which again are intended to sway its supporters and former supporters. In other words, even if the government fell over backwards to accommodate the opposition, there would likely be no half-way meeting point.
One could only wish that the two sides would stop talking at each other all the time, and start to communicate in a meaningful way. But then realistically speaking, that is a wish not likely to be fulfilled in 2017.