Give the President a chance
by Eusi Kwayana
The Presidency is too important and too tied to development and to everything else for anyone to behave as though it is no big thing. Yet in a way, it is no big thing. An astonishing thing in our society is that the PNC is unaware of its victories, or behaves as though it is. When the H-accord was signed, Mr Hoyte did say that Guyanese had won a great victory, but never again publicly stressed that mood. Yet it was the right mood. It was a victory for the main opposition party and it could be turned into a victory for the PPP as well and for the whole country. Why then did the limiting of the PPP/Civic's term of office not sink in as a great 'victory'? The answer is anybody's, and I will give mine. Now I cannot express the answer I thought I had, without the risk of being unfair. So let me say I have no answer. Again, the post-election protests were on the slogan "Janet must go." Now Her Excellency the President has gone. True, her going was not free and voluntary. Yet it showed, as many have noted, a readiness to lay aside high office and state power for another kind of role. Her husband, despite his known illness, had been persuaded to stay in office to lead the party to the next election. This proved fatal to him. It is good that despite her silence on the matter, Mrs Jagan learned from the experience. However famous we become, we are mortal and subject to Law. Her true claim to fame, though, is in setting vanity aside and to "go" in the face of the cry of non-recognition of the main opposition party. This is what took some doing. My own December 1998 "Statement on Mrs Jagan's conduct" came after the incidents of the private swearing-in - the marshal's papers and the ignoring of the court's injunction. Then I advised her to step down from her "shaky throne". It did not stop shaking, adding stress to whatever her condition was. I had been disappointed in her consenting to fill the role of President and at the justification she gave for that decision. My understanding after 1992 had been that she had wished to let go the handle of state power. Perhaps I am wrong and the rest of the country is right. Yet I found my views supported when she told her home town journalists from Chicago that all she wanted to do was to get her dog and her cat and go to her home in Bel Air and do what she wanted for once in her life. It is good at times to rely on our sense of what rings true and what does not ring true and try to recapture this sense. Her husband's death and the period of mourning brought a new and fresh relationship between Mrs Jagan and the African Guyanese masses. She was very conscious of their genuine sympathy and solidarity with her and her family in their bereavement. Who can deny that? Everyone has now forgotten how the terrible Buxtonians stopped the funeral procession in order to pay their tribtue to one they had not voted for since 1953. Yet all of this turned sour when she was assigned to announce the PPP Civic's A team for the 1997 elections with its offensive line of succession. Unless we can see the relationship between events and attitudes, we may come to wrong conclusions about important things. The same people who had given her their warm and sincere solidarity now saw her as prejudiced against Mr Sam Hinds. To crown it all, she was declared winner before she had won fifty-one per cent of the votes cast. The PNC is not yet sensing that Mrs Jagan's departure is in line with its slogan. "Janet Must Go!" Instead a new grievance, I hope a passing one, that her nominee cannot be legal was floated. Is this not self-oppression? Mr Rickey Singh, that doyen of Caribbean political analysts, now hopelessly politically one-eyed, also made the claim that Mrs Jagan would step down after appointing Jagdeo head of state. The PNC is right, though, when it points to the manipulation of the constitution. Mr Dev and others like Rev Seopaul Singh in their narrowness will see this as support for thc PNC. And it is no excuse to remind us, as Mr De Caires has done more than once, that the PPP had announced its intention to do so. It is not untimely to recall that in 1973 the former President Burnham, then Prime Minister, told the nation he would take a two-thirds majority and did take it. Do not some people threaten to commit and then commit a felony? Yet the law goes after them. Of course in West Indian literature there is that charming character, the Honest Thief. Mrs Jagan has said that she will be active. Her case is unique. She has handed over the reins of the state and will no doubt keep her place in the political organisation. In any case, it is my view, perhaps an oral point, that people who retire from leadership positions should have a duty to support a younger political generation in their work for the future, just as the younger ones had helped them in their time of responsibility. Those responsible may want to relieve her of the headship of the PPP/Civic's Anti -Corruption Committee, the most unhelpful committee of all our history. Corruption? Mr Rickey Singh may have noted President Jagdeo's declarations against corruption. I hope he will accept my argument that if a President says there is corruption to fight, he may just know what he is talking about; moreover, there may be cause for investigation. It is strange that a journalist can, with express malice, deem the WPA an "ally of the PNC" and not put his finger even once on the widespread corruption in the administration. There is a new President appointed by devious means. We are assuming that he has retained reasonable freedom of choice in domestic affairs. He has already given up his freedom in international monetary affairs. He can choose to play a purely PPP role, as some would want him to do and to be bound by the same sleight of hand which brought him to the presidency. He can break away from the entrapments and walk a new course. The political streams of the country are stagnant. The two major parties which command the population do not want to be seen to be talking to each other. They see each other as accursed and not capable of change, not worthy of trust. They convey this attitude their to masses and this attitude is a major source of the chronic, ethnic political tension we know. I am prepared to argue that they both endanger the welfare of their supporters. My own position - and I state it because I have confidence in it - is that Africans must offer moral leadership. Even now, after fifty odd years of political activity, I would say as I have always said. "Do not strike first." Applied to our present situation, it means that President Jagdeo should be taken at his word, as though he is new to the political leadership. In his moment of elevation he went out of his way of his way to reassure people. He did not harp on the wrongs of the opposition and claim innocence while accusing it of guilt. This is new and significant. As the WPA Co-Leader said, he does really seem to come without baggage, even the baggage of 1999. There is national leadership, there is party leadership, there is ethnic leadership. He has recognised the party leaderships. They should recognise his national leadership. It does not at all mean joining him politically, except where persons want to. Jagdeo takes over in Guyana at a time of multiple signs of problems - rice, race, gold and joblessness, bauxite, the exchange rate and a constitution yet to be decided and written. For those who do not want to lose the moral leadership it is time to give him the chance he has appealed for, not excuses.
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