Bharrat Jagdeo has been elected as the new General Secretary (GS) of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) to the surprise of not many. At the Party’s Congress in Essequibo last month, he received the largest number of votes to the Central Committee (CC) and was obviously the most highly regarded by the rank and file.
At that highest forum of the PPP, the dominant expressed sentiment was that the Party’s top leadership needed to be consolidated to confront the challenges at this juncture of its history and the history of Guyana. It was clear there were some in that leadership who were more concerned with their own ambitions than in representing the constituency the Party represented.
What was operating has been described as the “Iron Law of Institutions”. This posits that some “people who control institutions care first and foremost about their power within the institution rather than the power of the institution itself. Thus, they would rather the institution “fail” while they remain in power within the institution than for the institution to “succeed” if that requires them to lose power within the institution.”
After the last elections when the PPP was removed from office, the Party faltered because of this factor and did not take full advantage of the missteps of the People’s National Congress (PNC)-led A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) coalition to demonstrate to the Guyanese people, the clear and present danger they face from the PNC, which was merely taking them back to the vicissitudes of their first regime. The last “tax and waste” budget was one example of the PNC’s contempt for the Guyanese people while the attempted illegal expulsion of the CheddiJagan Research Centre (CJRC) from Red House through bullyism exemplified the frontal attack on the PPP occasioned by the divisions they detected in the PPP’s top leadership.
The majority of the members of the CC must be commended for rising to the challenge. At the elections for the GS, these members withstood the challenge from those who would continue with the old, divided leadership and accepted the unique confluence of experience and youth represented by BharratJagdeo in consolidating the leadership as had been done for most of the history of the PPP. He is now the leader of the party in its role as part of the constitutionally defined executive branch of Government as the “Leader of the Opposition” and the leader of the PPP political party mobilising the Guyanese people to articulate their interests in the operations of the State.
As Jagdeo said after his election as GS, the work ahead must address both aspects of the PPP’s mandate. As Leader of the Opposition, the PPP will have to present itself as ready to lead the nation after the next elections in 2020. The PNC-led Government has confirmed its unsuitability to govern Guyana. Economically, their performance has been nothing short of disastrous. Even his most vociferous critic would have to concede there is no other leader than Jagdeo who is qualified to lead Guyana in this area. He worked to successfully remove the debt albatross from the neck of the nation, which had been bequeathed by the PNC and piloted programmes that delivered the highest growth rate in the Region for almost a decade.
In terms of his leadership of the Party, Jagdeo’s challenge would be to address the perception that the PPP is not representative of all the groups in Guyana. While the PPP has throughout its history doggedly stuck to its commitment from 1950 to represent all the peoples of Guyana, the departure of Burnham precipitated a split both of the Party and the country’s ethnic groups that is still unhealed. But with the PNC-led coalition demonstrating its opportunistic use of the AFC to just give lip service to the goal of national unity, the PPP under the leadership of BharratJagdeo is poised to demonstrate concretely that it can do the job.
