WPA not ruling out coalescing but only on iron-clad terms

Last Updated on Sunday, 11 August 2024, 22:07 by Writer

Professor David Hinds.

The Working People’s Alliance (WPA) is not ruling out coalescing with other political parties to contest the 2025 general and regional elections, but will insist on a tight agreement that must include poverty eradication, rebalancing of wealth distribution and constitutionally entrenched power sharing, co-leader Dr David Hinds said at the weekend.

“Unlike the last time, when we just went in and built a coalition, built APNU (A Partnership for National Unity) at the expense of our party, this time around we’re taking a different approach that we are organising and if and when that time comes to go into a coalition, that we are really taking something into the coalition rather than just a handshake or whatever it is,” he told Demerara Waves Online News.

Dr Hinds, who is the WPA’s presidential candidate, said his party intends to demonstrate its support to other coalition partners during negotiations. He said in the past, his party had taken its “intellectual energies” to the coalition but had been unable to show how it had reached certain segments of the electorate. When asked how the WPA intends to do so without contesting an election on its own, the veteran Guyanese politician said his party plans to show its support in the general population through measurable response by the public to its campaign. “We do not have the economic and financial wherewithal to do polls but we are going to go out into the communities and hold public activities and hope that those public activities will be able to demonstrate that we do have some kind of critical support among the population,” he said.

He stressed that the WPA remains committed to coalition politics even if it is with the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) which was the major party in APNU. “We are going to make it difficult for any party to deal us a bad hand now because we are doing what we didn’t do the last time and made it easier for people to deal us a bad hand,” he said. After APNU+Alliance For Change’s defeat in the March 2020 elections, the WPA had exited APNU, saying that it was denied the right to choose its parliamentary representative, sidelined from shaping and agreement to policies as well as infrequent meetings. He acknowledged that in coalition politics, big parties seek to dominate small parties and the latter seek to maximise their potential or worth.

The WPA co-leader said the party’s key messages would be poverty alleviation, direct cash transfers of oil revenues to ordinary Guyanese, an end to winner-take-all politics in Guyana. “We feel that that is a most critical issue and if we are part of government, we are going to be pressing forcibly for the government to move towards abolishing winner-take-all politics,” he said, while acknowledging that the People’s Progressive Party Civic’s support would be needed. “At present the PPP shows no inclination of going in that direction but it does not mean that because of that we will raise it. We are going to raise it before the election. Ideally, we would like an end to winner-take-all before the election but if it doesn’t happen before election, whether we are part of government or we are part of the opposition, we intend to make that issue front and centre,” he said. He said even if all other problems are resolved and there is still a winner-take-all system that would be more dangerous for Guyana especially with the wealth now available to the country.

Dr Hinds recommended wide-ranging curriculum reform to address Guyana’s racial problem and increased teachers’ salaries. He said the WPA plans to promise the electorate a revamping of wealth distribution which is currently “lopsided from a class standpoint” in favour of the elite and ethnicity. “That is something we want to talk about during the campaign so that if and when we are part of a government, we will be able to agree to policies that will bring about some equitable distribution of wealth from a social class standpoint and also an ethnic standpoint,” he said. Dr Hinds said emphasis would also be placed on wealth distribution from a gender perspective, against the backdrop of many women being in small business and single parents. “The distribution of the resources that we have now is not reaching out to them. We want to add that dimension about the gender distribution of wealth and pay attention to small businesses and empowering small businesses, not through handouts but through policy. Wwe want to be big on policy,” he said.

The WPA presidential candidate said its economic policy team has begun working on his party’s manifesto and would “press” for its contents to be included in a coalition’s manifesto if it decides to team up with other parties.