Member of Parliament Terrence Campbell has suggested that Vice-President Bharrat Jagdeo’s call for political cooperation between the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) and the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) is driven by concerns that a united Opposition could threaten the governing party’s hold on power.
In a letter to Kiskadee Watch yesterday, Campbell said Jagdeo’s greatest political concern was the possibility of the PNCR joining an opposition coalition capable of displacing the PPP/C from office.
Campbell, who heads APNU’s parliamentary team, referred to the role of opposition coalitions in the PPP’s removal from office in 1964 and again in 2015, noting that a united Opposition could pose a significant threat to the governing party’s continued dominance.
He further shared that a change of government could bring greater scrutiny of the distribution of state resources and accountability for individuals who may have accumulated wealth improperly over the past six years.
Campbell’s remarks come in light of Jagdeo’s recent statement that Guyana’s political future would involve the PPP/C and PNCR working together “at some level and in some fashion”. However, Campbell questioned whether the proposal represented a genuine commitment to power sharing or an attempt to secure the PNCR’s cooperation in maintaining the PPP/C’s political dominance. “His greatest political concern is the prospect of the PNCR in a broader opposition coalition capable of displacing the PPP/C from office,” Campbell wrote.
He said Jagdeo had offered no clear framework for cooperation, no credible commitments to institutional inclusion and no indication that the Government was prepared to surrender any meaningful portion of its executive authority.
He also noted Jagdeo’s failure to mention the now main opposition We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) party in his remarks, arguing that its emergence as a significant political force had changed Guyana’s traditional two-party political landscape. He said such a force could create conditions more favourable to power sharing than those that existed when the PPP/C and PNCR dominated the political landscape.
Campbell noted that Jagdeo had pointed to constitutional reforms undertaken in 2001, when the two parties cooperated on changes intended to facilitate power sharing at the legislative level. However, Jagdeo had said that a lack of trust between the parties remained an obstacle to executive power sharing, which he believed could have resulted in “policy paralysis” at the time.
The situation had deteriorated since then, Campbell said, pointing to the government’s failure to demonstrate a genuine commitment to cooperation and inclusivity. Among the examples he cited were the preparation of the national budget without consultation with the Opposition or trade unions, the absence of Opposition representation on the board of the Guyana Development Bank, and the government’s handling of the MV Barima tragedy.
He also criticised the government’s spending of oil revenues without a national consensus on the balance between expenditure and savings, and raised concerns about the circumstances surrounding the removal of Yonette Cummings-Edwards as Acting Chancellor of the Judiciary.
Campbell said that these actions undermined the credibility of Jagdeo’s proposal for political cooperation.
He referenced earlier efforts, including political cooperation in the 1970s, attempts to form a coalition government before the death of Forbes Burnham in 1985, and discussions between Jagdeo and former PNCR leader Robert Corbin in the early 2000s.
He also cited the political experiment of 1950 where national unity was achieved in the fight for independence, noting that it eventually unravelled under the pressures of personal ambition, ethnic competition and foreign intervention.
Jagdeo’s proposal, he argued, must be assessed against the government’s actions and whether it is prepared to share meaningful political power. “Jagdeo must wheel and come again. Cooperation without trust, institutional safeguards and a clearly defined framework for accountability risks is a strategy for political survival.”
Speaking earlier this month at a wake for Corbin, Jagdeo had warned that the PPP and PNCR risk political extinction unless they move beyond entrenched divisions.
He argued that younger Guyanese were no longer confined by rigid party loyalties and could agree with different parties on different issues.
“Unless our parties, these two parties change today, the era of binary thinking of old is long gone. We will face extinction. We will face extinction,” he declared.
Jagdeo said Corbin had recognised the damage caused by decades of racial division, mistrust and pressure to conform to party positions. He described him as willing to take political risks to overcome those barriers.
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