Dear Editor,
The opening of parliament and sitting of the National Assembly on Monday November 3 was a landmark. It revealed the APNU’s envy, bitterness and rivalry towards its political rivals.
Roughly two months ago, the APNU was given a sound trashing beating them down to third place in the annals of Guyana’s electoral history. I foresee more to come of this three-pronged feeling of resentment by APNU towards its opponents having lost so terribly ever in its history
In retrospect, it took the PNC’s leadership sometime ‘to ‘catch itself’ and to realise that some of its leaders and many of its supporters had discreetly embraced WIN. By the time they ‘caught themselves’ too late! too late! was the cry.
To supporters of the APNU at home and abroad, the elections’ results were a blow of monumental proportions. They felt betrayed, swindled, even mocked. Anger exploded at the rank-and-file levels of the party only to settle into a simmering mess of bitterness, confusion and disbelief.
Actually, the APNU’s bitterness is not because of the walloping it got from PPP/C, it’s old political archenemy; apparently the PNC had grown so accustomed to being beaten at the polls by the PPP that it had grown numb, tired and worn out. By the time a date for the election was announced, rather than fighting its political opponents, the APNU was engaged in ‘nasty and brutish’ infighting resulting in the migration by many in its leadership to its opponents.
Because the bitterness was still flowing at the time of the Assembly’s first sitting, the irreparable separation, and hurt suffered by the APNU was divulged by its members. And as though the bitterness displayed by its members during the sitting was insufficient, later in the evening of the same day, through certain well known social media outlets, there was no sign of remorse of the behaviour earlier that day.
I view the APNU’s rivalry with others not dissimilar from the daily occurrences at the Berbice car park or the Linden mini-bus park where competition for passengers is driven by mutual obsession. In other words, the APNU is driven by desperation for organisational recovery while WIN is driven by the need to deliver on undeliverable promises it made to its supporters. Ironically, both appear to be investing more mental and emotional resources in each other than circumstances dictate.
Prior to the election, the PNC, being almost as old as the PPP/C sought to use its size and strength as advantage to uphold its political status. With the PPP/C, it sought dominance over intellectual territory but lost miserably. Meanwhile, WIN using its own twisted version of ‘cash grant’ sought to disrupt the political status quo.
By the end of the election, Norton had almost become a shrinking wallflower, had it not been for party loyalists who rescued him he would have disappeared completely from the political arena.
Practically, true political rivals like the PPP and PNC know each other. They have long, enmeshed histories. The two parties were once considered evenly matched – but with controversy after controversy following each election within the loser/winner syndrome, the more they propelled each other on.
But that dynamic changed somewhat when WIN entered the political hustings. Rivalry between the PNC and WIN became the focus of attention. Competition between the two was characterised by unethical behaviour such as lying or cheating. The PPP/C had done its homework between 2020 to 2025 and was already at the homestretch only with attentive and focused wrapping-up left to be done before going to the polls.
Political rivalry can be good for a democracy. It proved to be so for the PPP but not so for the PNC. Rivalry helped the PPP up its game and gain more insight about what was needed for greater success at the elections. Apparently, the inadequacies of WIN aroused the hostility demonstrated by the PNC, but mistakenly, very late in the day. The bitterness and rudeness displayed by the APNU parliamentarians at the first sitting of the Assembly was obvious for all to see. The APNU should shed itself of the envy and bitterness, should it fail to do so the flock that moved over to others will be lost forever and can grow even bigger to the benefit especially of the PPP/C.