MP Lennox Shuman’s letter in today’s Stabroek News has surely intensified the siege of its own making that is engulfing the PPP government. In his letter, calling for the government to rescind the South Rupununi mining agreement and return to the table, Shuman did not mince his words. He expressed extreme disappointment over the lack of transformation in the post-2020 PPP govt and added that it has “zero inclination to meaningfully consult the Indigenous Peoples on any matter.”
Given Shuman’s open willingness soon after the 2020 election to, in his words, offer his services sincerely and wholeheartedly to the PPP government, his now bald public criticism of the PPP is a bombshell that will likely have political repercussions for it among the Hinterland electorate. Freedom House surely knows this. And it is this knowledge that is adding to the party’s sense of siege or beleaguerment.
The siege likely originated when it became clear to the public that the PPP had no plans to push for a larger government cut in the petroleum sharing agreements and, worse, to urgently use the country’s oil wealth to meet the people’s basic needs. The crisis for PPP rapidly worsened with other parallel and subsequent developments. These include its mishandling of the EPA, the EIAs and other environmental matters; its resistance to conducting a full feasibility study for the gas-to-shore pipeline project; the unilateral imposition of a paltry 7% salary increase for public servants after offering nothing in the previous two budgets; and the lack of a confidence-building and consistent strategy to deal with the on-going COVID threat. Now we have a leading Indigenous People’s human rights activist and MP, in Lennox Shuman, calling out the government for its old bad habits—the very habits that caused it to lose its majority in 2011 and the government in the 2015 election.
These and other matters have created a rising public perception of a PPP government that is unreformed and out-of-depth. Not surprisingly, new civil society activists and groups have sprung up (such as Article 13) and the editorials of the two leading newspapers (SN and KN) are weekly finding ample examples of government failure. In all this, the once-formidable PPP propaganda machinery is a shadow of its old self. Likely, some in the party are on the verge of panic. One tenacious PPP supporter, for instance, blogged under Shuman’s letter: “It’s extremely distressing to read letters protesting marginalization from an Indigenous Representative. How many enemies do we want to have by 2025? They are already lining up.”
CONPOV will keep an eye on the issue, especially on two fronts. One, to see if the sense of siege deepens and, two, to see if the APNU+AFC can get its act together to capitalize on the situation and offer itself as a credible alternative to the people.