There is a pervasive feeling among observers, whether they are neutral or close to the PPP or sympathetic to the government that the PNC wants power through the backdoor, or wants power for itself and will stop at nothing to get it.
Then there was the judgment of the PPP itself during the reign of Desmond Hoyte as opposition leader that Hoyte behaved as if he was still in power.
That analysis became obsolete with the rise of a new leader in the PNC after Hoyte’s death. Robert Corbin was successful in convincing a new school of post-1992 PNC leaders that he can be a successful negotiator as opposition leader and therefore, he should be awarded their blessing; he was given it.
The nagging belief that there is a Freudian illusion inside the mind of the PNC that it runs things in Guyana began to wane. But now, the Freudian monster is out again and is threatening to devour both Corbin and the PNC. The opposition attitude to the format (not the terms only) of the Presidential Commission is self-destructive.
One can use more graphic adjectives but this one is compellingly appropriate. How Ravi Dev got caught in this vortex of mis-strategy should be a subject for political pundits and social commentators. It would be interesting to see in which direction the PNC will point if it is asked which government succumbs to the demands of the opposition the way the PNC wants the ruling party to do. The answer is an impossible one. No ruling administration in this entire world will be seen metabolistically acceding to the every edict that the opposition advances.
I am saying that there isn’t a country today in which the elected government just gives in to what the opposition wants. The combined opposition’s request to shape the probe into the alleged misconduct by Gajraj is a scenario involving puerile, incompetent and unrealistic strategies. Politics must never be planned in a zero sum context. When that is done, there is no room for compromise. Dignity, credibility and survival become an obsession and there must be a winner and a loser. The combined opposition did not want a compromise. It wanted the humiliation of the ruling party.
Take the Hutton Inquiry. It was Tony Blair who chose Lord Hutton to hold the enquiry into whether a document that justified the case for going to war with Iraq was “sexed” up by Blair’s PR adviser. The combined opposition clamoured for a judicial commission after Dr. Kelly committed suicide. Blair chose the type of inquiry and the person, Lord Hutton, to head it. The Hutton Commission came up with the biggest farce in English history (and that is a long history indeed) when all Hutton said in his conclusion was that the BBC exercised poor journalism.
The opposition then got something to use against Blair - a “sexed” up Hutton report.
This is what the combined opposition in Guyana should wait for. To see how the Presidential Commission will perform. But to insist that the format of and the personnel to head the commission must be the selections of the opposition is a form of humiliation that no government would accept. What the PNC has been doing is practicing zero-sum oppositional tactics. The reason for such a logistical plan is because it knows that there is a government in Guyana that is crisis-ridden, weak and facing declining support. This assessment has led the PNC to up the tempo and become torridly excessive in its demands.
On the Gajraj debacle, it knows the PPP is particularly vulnerable because the international community is disappointed with the government. Thus the inflexible shape of its dictate on the type of investigation.
But practical planning by an opposition must be based on some form of psychology theory. A ruling party would hardly give in to an opposition insistence without trying to save face. This is exactly what the PPP did. It relented and accepted an inquiry. But to be seen accepting the specific framework of the opposition is hardly a course of action open to the PPP. What Ravi Dev and the PNC should have zeroed in on is the range of the inquiry.
This they have correctly done and which I will come to below but the rejection of the commission is going to backfire in the face of the People’s Movement for Justice (which takes in the combined opposition) for two essential reasons. First, it will bring back some sympathy for the government and possibly engender ideas of some alienated sections that the government is not as bullying as it appeared to be. Already, one prominent businessman who is not in the least enamoured with the PPP and is partial to Ravi Dev told me yesterday morning that the PNC is over-doing it.
Secondly, the donor community may soften its attitude and it may perceive the opposition as deliberately trying to prolong political instability and this can undermine the developing support the community is showing the opposition.
We now come to the jurisdictional nature of the commission. It has not been announced as yet what type of hearing the three-man panel will adopt but secret testimony must uncompromisingly and definitely be part of its function.
Let me tell you about fear in this country. Readers would not believe the learned mind, the eminent people, and the experienced people in this country who have told me that the recent attack I suffered, including the hijacking of my car, was specially arranged as a target attack. They believed that it was no random criminal assault. They fear for me and since that fateful Saturday morning in my garage, I am being warned all the time to be careful.
I am now approached by strangers who never spoke to me while jogging in the National Park and on the Sheriff Street seawall and they would come and say: “Be careful, Guyana is now a place where people will hurt you for speaking out.”
The Government of Guyana will be utterly foolish to think that at that hearing, citizens are going to go in front of an open hearing and “spill their guts.” The fear will drown them before they open the commissioners’ door to speak. There is no way, the combined opposition, the donor community and this country should allow the Commission of Inquiry to proceed without it being specifically laid down that in camera hearing is allowed.
The commission’s jurisdiction must of necessity include the entire spectrum of violence since the Mash Day jail break, including the Buxton conspiracy and the phantom phenomenon. To exclude these categories is not only tantamount to being a fraud but is definitely a fraud in itself. The three-man panel must then resign immediately.