The PPP is unraveling in public view for all to see. GECOM declared a February 2020 timeline for elections and everyone seems to be going crazy. Bharrat Jagdeo, Irfaan Ali, the GMSA, and Gerry Gouveia of the Private Sector Commission.
For months we were fed a diet of a “drop dead date” for elections. First it was March 21, 2019, and then it was September 18, 2019. According to the PPP, the earth would have stop spinning on this date. On the morning of September 19th, we were to wake and find that the government had disappeared. Well that did not happen, the government is still in place and functioning, and the PPP is unraveling.
The political tomfoolery of putting your presidential candidate to behave like a hooligan and thug is an indication of sheer panic. To have him in the forefront of an activity that threatened violence against the sitting president and a minister of the government is asinine. Why reveal your candidate as a mere hooligan and thug?
Then there is the total unmasking of the Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association. They were embedded and undercover as a member of civil society. Then in a fit of panic they were coopted to orchastrate the ugly situation at the Pegasus Hotel that threatened the security of the President and ministers of the government. The GM&SA has been outed, and is of no more use to the PPP, other than as a known partisan outfit like GAWU and the RPA.
Then there is Gerry Gouveia. He is the PPP most active civil society front on social media. He put in a lot of work trying to convince all who would listen that his actions, and positions are based on principle. He made the rounds on emancipation eve, attending Yuruba Singers fete at GNS, and the libation hang at Julien’s on July 31st. Then he scuttled all that by making the racist post comparing President Granger to Robert Mugabe.
His choice of Mugabe for this post is all about a subliminal racist message. He did not choose Erdoğan. He did not choose Duterte. He did not Muduro. He chose Mugabe. Why? Gerry Gouveia has exposed himself.
These events demonstrate nothing short of the unraveling of the PPP. Their careful orchastrated Social Coup D’etat is lying in taters and they seem not to know the next step. Their hope was that the ABC&E counties would have stepped in to save the day. Yes, there is an ABE statement declaring the government is outside of the constitutional limits. However, this is far short of what the PPP hoped for. Yes, the ABE mentioned the possibility of suspending aid just like they did in 2014, but this is where Jagdeo and the PPP got it wrong.
Actually we were here before. In 1992, the ABC threatened to withdraw aid if the elections were not postponed to allow for a new voters list. Here President Hoyte was faced with the prospect of five years of no aid. He postponed the elections for two years, the PPP got their list, and was even allowed by the Carter Center to add 40,000 names.
On this occasion the ABE is calling for elections as early as possible. Whatever they decide to do will be overtaken when President Granger announces the election date in November. Surely this does not have the same weight as the threat made in 1992. It is not like if they could say, “your credible elections which were held in February were too late, and therefore we do not recognize it, go back and hold it earlier.”
The Social Coup D’etat was conceived to ensure the use of the corrupt list, which would have allowed for fraudulent voting by the PPP. Elections in February 2020 will allow for the cleansing of the list. This means the Social Coup D’etat is officially dead. Bharrat Jagdeo brinkmanship politics has failed, and it has damaged the PPP, exposed his candidate as a hooligan and thug, and most significant, mobilized support for the coalition government.