After Jagan – focus on PNC
by Rickey Singh
THE RESIGNATION Wednesday of Janet Jagan as President of Guyana and succession by her favoured choice, Minister of Finance, Bharrat Jagdeo, will have a very significant impact on party politics in that country where she and her late husband, President Cheddi Jagan, remain legendary political figures. Whatever the future of Guyana without the Jagans at the leadership helm of party or government, Wednesday’s generational in leadership change resulting from her resignation will undoubtedly have a telling impact on the future leadership of the main opposition People’s National Congress (PNC) that is faced with its own internal problems, and not just financial. For a start, the taunts hurled at Janet Jagan from the PNC about her age at the 1997 General Election when she was 77, will come to haunt the party for new election in 2001 when its leader, Desmond Hoyte, who will be 72 and then the oldest of political leaders in the Caribbean Community. Significantly, last Sunday, when they knew that Jagan was preparing to announce her decision to resign, Hoyte and his colleagues were locked in a special meeting of the PNC’s General Council to determine whether or not to go ahead with a biennial congress originally slated for later this month. They decided to postpone it for a year as a “pre-election congress”. That decision came amid reports – dismissed by party spokesmen – of a likely leadership issue being one of the important developments for the Congress. But in reporting the postponement, the Stabroek News also stated: “Earlier reports had indicated that there might have been differences of opinion between the older and younger members of the party,especially as it relates to the concept of power-sharing ...” Apparently caught off guard by Jagan’s sudden resignation and knowing of the implications of 35-year-old Jagdeo as the new Executive President, the PNC, while saying precious little about the postponement of its congress, has been complaining about violation of the “spirit and intent” of the Guyana Constitution in the appointment of Jagdeo. Making politics is the business of parties. But not just the PNC, Guyana as a whole had learned during the 1997 general election, which followed some nine months after President Cheddi Jagan’s death, that the presidency will always be held by a representative of the PPP and that of prime minister by its Civic component. For all its bitter complaints and threats, the PNC knew that it had no case to take to court to establish a violation of the existing “Burnhamist” constitution to prevent Jagdeo assuming the presidency. What it can do, and this will hardly come as any surprise to informed Caribbean watchers of Guyana’s complex and distressing politics, is that its leader, Hoyte, can still refuse to meet with the new president – as he did while Jagan was in office – using the usual claim of the defeated about “legitimacy” of the government. The truth is, as events have established, the president of the PPP/Civic administration does not need Hoyte’s “recognition” to conduct the nation’s business. Incidentally, why is “legitimate” government a concern of the PNC – after its defeat in 1992 and a history of rigged elections? Hoyte himself continues to expediently ignore the reality that it was the President of a supposedly “illegitimate” government (Janet Jagan) who made it possible, by assenting to a relevant Bill, for him and his colleagues to retain the parliamentary seats they had lost by an extended post-1997 election boycott.
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