Trevor Su­dama

Re­ports sug­gest that many of the elec­tors who vot­ed for the AFC, of which MP Char­ran­das Per­saud was a mem­ber, were In­do-Guyanese sug­ar work­ers and rice farm­ers whose liveli­hoods were dis­as­trous­ly im­pact­ed by the poli­cies and ac­tions of the AP­NU/AFC Gov­ern­ment. There were whole­sale lay-offs of sug­ar work­ers and the in­comes of rice farm­ers were sub­stan­tial­ly re­duced. The Star­broek News would com­ment that the AP­NU/AFC ad­min­is­tra­tion did not re­alise "that three and a half years of its gov­er­nance could have awak­ened deep-seat­ed and seething re­sent­ment at its han­dling of the sug­ar in­dus­try and oth­er parts of the econ­o­my".

It was al­so re­port­ed that Vol­da Lawrence, Min­is­ter of Health and chair­man of the PN­CR, the dri­ving force in the coali­tion Gov­ern­ment, had pub­licly stat­ed at a Dis­trict Con­fer­ence in No­vem­ber 2018, that em­ploy­ment in the Gov­ern­ment ser­vices was re­served for PN­CR mem­bers, ob­vi­ous­ly to the ex­clu­sion of mem­bers of the AFC and oth­er par­ties in the coali­tion. This state­ment is not sur­pris­ing, as the PNC un­der Forbes Burn­ham had em­braced the doc­trine of the para­mount­cy of the par­ty in all spheres. In the ab­sence of a re­but­tal from the lead­er­ship of the Granger-led Gov­ern­ment, MP Char­ran­das Per­saud may have felt that his sup­port for the rul­ing coali­tion was abused. In ad­di­tion, he would have been acute­ly aware of the ero­sion of elec­toral sup­port for the AFC in the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions of No­vem­ber 2018.

If there­fore, Char­ran­das Per­saud was of the view that the ru­inous poli­cies and dic­ta­to­r­i­al ten­den­cies of the AP­NU/AFC ad­min­is­tra­tion and the con­se­quent alien­ation of vot­er sup­port de­mand­ed an ap­pro­pri­ate re­sponse from him, then his sup­port for the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion against the Gov­ern­ment was in the best tra­di­tions of rep­re­sen­ta­tive par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy.

The Granger-led Gov­ern­ment has not tak­en the de­feat in Par­lia­ment on the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion ly­ing down, ob­vi­ous­ly be­cause no one wants to lose pow­er. First­ly, there was an ap­peal to the Speak­er by the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and oth­er mem­bers to re­verse the de­ci­sion of Par­lia­ment on the ground that the vote was not passed by the re­quired con­sti­tu­tion­al min­i­mum which was deemed to be 34 and not 33. The Speak­er has since re­ferred the mat­ter to the courts for de­ci­sion. Sec­ond­ly, it was al­leged that PM Char­ran­das Per­saud re­ceived a bribe from the PPP/Civic Op­po­si­tion in col­lab­o­ra­tion with po­lit­i­cal el­e­ments in Trinidad to vote as he did. This al­le­ga­tion has yet to be sub­stan­ti­at­ed by hard ev­i­dence. Third­ly, it has been claimed that Char­ran­das Per­saud had dual cit­i­zen­ship. If this dis­qual­i­fied him from be­ing a mem­ber of the Guyana Par­lia­ment, would his vote, as a re­sult, be in­valid and there­fore null and void? As far as I am aware, there has been no of­fi­cial con­fir­ma­tion of the dual cit­i­zen­ship al­le­ga­tion. If how­ev­er, this in­for­ma­tion be­came known to mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment af­ter the vote, then the is­sue of the le­gal va­lid­i­ty of the re­ver­sal of a de­ci­sion retroac­tive­ly aris­es.

There are var­i­ous pos­si­ble out­comes aris­ing out of the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion. The first is that the vote could be de­clared in­valid and there­fore the AP­NU/AFC Gov­ern­ment sur­vives and will con­tin­ue in of­fice for an­oth­er year and a half un­til the next elec­tions. From some ac­counts, it prob­a­bly has lost the sup­port of the ma­jor­i­ty of the Guyanese elec­tors and there­fore does not have the moral au­thor­i­ty to con­tin­ue to gov­ern.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Bhar­rat Jagdeo has stat­ed that "this gov­ern­ment is to­tal­ly use­less to the peo­ple of Guyana. The longer they stay there, the more dam­ag­ing it will be to our fu­ture". Char­ran­das Per­saud has in­sist­ed that "I feel that 80 per cent of the Guyanese pop­u­lace would want to have this gov­ern­ment re­moved..." Poll­ster Vish­nu Bis­ram was un­equiv­o­cal in his view that "This Pres­i­dent David Granger-led ad­min­is­tra­tion has been the most un­pop­u­lar since the time of the Forbes Burn­ham dic­ta­tor­ship dur­ing the 1970s and 1980s". The Star­broek News would quote a Berbice elec­tor thus: "For what was go­ing on in the past three and a half years…this gov­ern­ment was pres­sur­ing the peo­ple, the work­ing class peo­ple."

An­oth­er pos­si­ble out­come is that the no-con­fi­dence vote stands and gen­er­al elec­tions called in three months. There is spec­u­la­tion whether the elec­toral process will be free of vi­o­lence and rig­ging, and the re­sults a fair and ac­cu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the will of the Guyanese peo­ple. It will be re­called that rigged elec­tions was a fea­ture of the PNC regime un­der Burn­ham in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Even as re­cent as 2015, the elec­tion re­sults were dis­put­ed by the PPP/Civic.

If the elec­tion is called and the PPP/Civic is de­clared the win­ner, will PNC sup­port­ers ac­cept the re­sults or will they re­sort to vi­o­lence against the PPP/Civic sup­port­ers as has hap­pened in the 1962-1964 pe­ri­od and from 1992 on­wards. Suf­fice to say, the Guyanese peo­ple have en­dured a trou­bled po­lit­i­cal his­to­ry.