Guyanese Online

In a historic move, A New and United Guyana (ANUG), the Liberty and Justice Party (LJP) and The New Movement (TNM) have agreed to join their Lists of Candidates so that the votes they secure at the March 2 General and Regional elections could be counted collectively and improve their chances of securing parliamentary and regional seats. 

ANUG led by Ralph Ramkarran, the LJP led by Lenox Shuman and TNM led by Asha Kissoon have informed Chief Election Officer Keith Lowenfield that they wish to engage in a “joinder of lists.”

COMMENTARY

Final Day for Coalitions Before Elections – Jan 17, 2020 

Jan 17, 2020 – Editorial by Kaieteur News  – (Written before the announcement reported above)

Today – Jan 17, 2020, is the deadline for groups to form coalitions. Are new participants in the electoral race sure of what they are about, of the enormous responsibilities that come from being involved?

Given the state of uncertainty and ill-preparedness by some of those groups, which made it under the 5 o’clock wire last Friday, the answer is not comforting, since they are still hunting to find all their marbles. In fact, the record shows that one group did not even make it within the timeframe. GECOM officials rescued, through extending the discretionary, to the ill-fated and highly unimpressive.

Who would vote for any of them? Who kind of presence do they really represent? What manner of governance would they offer?

If this shakiness is what was manifested while readying for nomination, then it is not credible that some can deliver in the crunch, when large national issues arise for examination, deliberation, and decision. This was sloppiness, pure and straight, and would be unpardonable, if it were not so laughable.

What a wild, untamed bunch of the unsteady and unready! Good luck, Guyana with such characters. Who would want them as partners?

There were those who went back and forth and then back again. There could be no meeting of the minds for whatever reason; this is not decisive leadership. One group is usually on the sober side of this troubling business but does not have much momentum.

`The others meander about looking to be beneficiaries of an arranged midnight marriage. The time for the umbrella of a grand coalition is late, the probability seems remote. With unawareness and indecisiveness like this at this witching hour, what holds for the future?

What could possibly hold, other than the shorthanded and shortsighted? Interest in governance has faded; it is all about ego and possibilities. It is where the old dogs triumph, as has been the norm. From their perspectives, the latest nuisances do not know what to do with themselves.

They veteran heavyweights pick them apart, carve them up, and use them, as usual, again; and manipulate them.

Look closely at some members of the new groups. Whoever believes that they have what it takes to be a principled legislator should be committed. The thought of some of them in the opposition benches is jarring, since these aspirants lack the depth of character and ethical commitment that are prerequisites to lift this place to just one other rung on the ladder.

Can they power through a dirty environment and make people trust them, actually think of coalescing with them? There is great uncertainty about this; the faith and trust are not there. The last thing this society needs is for more of the kind of leaders that we have had over the long decades, who pretend to be servants, but end of being the worst kind of hustlers.

We do not need more of them, as there are more than enough of them already. Why add more of the potentially warped and crooked to the boil?

For all that is known, their best function, and the most utility from their presence, would be as ‘no-confidence’ threats and clones. Along the same lines, there are those new presences that may not have had any telltale encounters with law enforcement, but they are far from untainted, with records and stories of their own that do not lend credibility, nor do they instill confidence.

If this was what they were before, when operating as private citizens, and below the radar, then there is not much that comforts that they can offer as to principle and character and clean governance.

Make no mistake; this is the place where we have arrived, where new people look to join political hands with the old ones. With newcomers like these, it is the sameness of the ancient, as in from 1960, and all the lost years in between.

The oil that comes might as well be radioactive, for all of the effects that it could have on the hopes of this society. For it is the same sorry Guyanese political story.