The President needs time, space and support
Mar 01, 2017 , http://www.kaieteurnewsonline....e-space-and-support/
People are making what they believe are reasonable demands on the President. They are concerned that he is not acting on these demands.
There are supporters of the APNU who are having serious misgivings about the President. Some have been saying that he is too laid back and thus not providing the leadership that is expected.
A Stabroek News editorial recently did a hatchet job on the President, questioning his leadership. The Stabroek News is not alone; similar sentiments are being echoed across the country and even outside of the country.
The President’s loss of popularity is not being helped by his poor public relations team. He has no public relations strategy. None whatsoever! He has been helpless in the face of the onslaught of criticisms because he lacks a high profile PR team.
Governments, today, cannot afford to not have the best PR teams in place. A government’s image is the most important function in modern government and it requires a dedicated ministry and experienced personnel and PR firms to execute.
Government’s image cannot be left to performance and policies. The best of performance and the best of policies can be discredited by a smart opposition and even by a small and disappointed section of the electorate.
PR cannot therefore be underemphasized. It has to be placed in the hands of professionals, not novices who are learning on the job. Modern governments do not tinker with their image. They bring in the best to deal with this important aspect of governance. But PR alone cannot account for the disapproval ratings of the President. The people also have unrealistic and uninformed expectations of the President.
They need to give him space. They need to give him time. They need to lend him their support.
The challenges which President Granger faces today are almost identical to the challenges which Bharrat Jagdeo faced when he was President. People also expected more of Jagdeo in his early years. They were disappointed that he did not shake up the political system when he came in.
The reality of politics is that a President has to move with stealth in his early years especially when that person is a relative political newcomer, like both Granger and Jagdeo were when they were catapulted into political stardom.
When Granger became the Presidential candidate for the APNU in 2011, he was a political unknown. He had never been part of the Executive of the PNCR before. He therefore came into the political limelight without having any strong leadership groundings in the PNCR or the PNC.
To his credit, Granger took this disadvantage and turned into a political advantage. He used the period as Leader of the Opposition to become better known and a formidable politician. He used it to strengthen his hold on the party. It was under his helm that ex-military officers gained a solid foothold within the party’s electoral machinery. This has paid off for the PNCR.
Jagdeo had the same problem. He came to the Presidency at a time when Mrs. Janet Jagan exercised a stranglehold on the PPP.
Jagdeo is perhaps the most astute politician this country has ever produced. He moved with stealth and took control slowly but surely, using state power, of the PPP. Today he owns it.
Mrs. Jagan was discarded into the political wilderness. Donald Ramotar, after the loss of the 2015 elections, became a political casualty within his party. His showing at the last elections demonstrated how much control the Jagdeoites has over the PPP. Despite being a long-serving General Secretary, Ramotar was not a major vote-puller during the Congress.
Granger, like Jagdeo did, needs time to overcome the resistance from within his party, He cannot do things which people expect of him as fast as they want him to do it. He has to be careful about ruffling feathers within the party. He needs support in order to take full control of the
PNCR so that he can pursue his vision for the country.
He also has the additional handicap of having to run a coalition. The task of keeping a coalition together is not easy, not with powerhouses like some of the figures within the AFC.
But the PNCR has managed skillfully to orchestrate changes within the AFC that will render the coalition’s second major partner pliable to the whims of the PNCR.
Granger must be given time so that he can entrench himself deeper within his party and its massive support base. He must he given the political space to strengthen his position within the party so that he can be an impregnable force in the country, which is what people expect of their leaders.
But he cannot do this alone. He needs support and more importantly he needs to fix his PR and stop putting such an important function in the hands of children.
