Freddie Kissoon column – When roles get reversed, history gets distorted

May 12, 2008 Freddie Kissoon

---

On Arrival Day, in my column for that edition of Kaiteur News, entitled “The Political Arrival of the East Indians,” I wrote: “When one attempts to understand the psyche of the African and East Indian in Guyana, one must come to grips with the fact that the process is more complicated than it appears. The research must go beyond voting patterns and encapsulate the comparative study of East Indian attitudes to East Indian leadership in an authoritarian government and African mental perceptions of dictatorial politics of African rulers (in both cases, I am referring to Guyana).”

Mr. Ravi Dev assigned his Sunday Kaieteur article (yesterday) to a critique of “The Political Arrival of the East Indians.” Unfortunately, Mr. Dev did not go in the direction I suggested, that is, to look beyond electoral patterns.

Mr. Dev wrote: “Even in the face of the reality of the complete destruction of the economy, physical infrastructure and social capital, I would like to point out that in 1992 the PNC received 42% of the vote – the exact percentage of the African mixed population.”

Later down in his adumbration, Dev repeated his long-held belief that the motivation of both race groups when they vote is fear.

Dev went on to argue that the six seats Africans gave the AFC at the last election were not driven by multi-racial desires. Africans, according to him in that Sunday piece, would not have balloted that way if Ramjattan was the AFC’s presidential guy. Carefully avoided by Dev was his perennial contention that the two Leviathans (the PNC and PPP) get the X from us because of fear of the other side winning.

But, and I emphasize the BUT, but where was the fear of the Africans when they ignored the PNC and gave six seats to the AFC? Let us now go into the tentative mind of the African on polling day in August 2006. He/she says, “I cannot vote against the PNC, it is the party of Africans. I would like to, but (remember the BUT) the other contestant is that East Indian party, the PPP. If I go for the AFC and East Indians stay with the PPP, then the African party loses out, so I will stick with the PNC.”

Mr. Dev has weakened his argument by saying that the AFC got its six seats because, after all, Trotman was an African Guyanese. Dev has to account for the complete absence of fear in those voters that cast their X for the AFC. If trepidation was present in their souls they would have been deterred, and they would have persevered with the PNC.

Across the divide, Mr. Dev’s party, ROAR, was obliterated. Why? Because the East Indian embodied the very quote I put in the mind of the African Guyanese above. Mr. Dev’s point of fear is hard to understand. East Indians lived in a nightmare from 2002 -2004, when the Government failed them on crime solution.
Because of living in fear, they should not have voted again for the PPP. That seems to me to be logical human thinking.

The East Indian felt that if he/she had selected Dev, then the other side would have won. That “other side,” of course, was the African party, the PNC. I suspect that the seats of the AFC pose an insurmountable obstacle for Mr. Dev’s theory of the ethnic security dilemma in the body politic of Guyana.
Mr. Dev may not want to accord the AFC dimension of the 2006 election the importance, consequences and implications it deserves.

I cannot outline a comprehensive repudiation of Dev’s outline in a single column; the arguments are too involved for the limited space available. Two equations of 1992 have to be studied. One is: how did we arrive at 1992? What type of journey brought us to 1992? Who possessed the dynamics that propelled us to 1992? It is the most sacred area for discussion in the analysis of post 1968 Guyana.

When we put it under scrutiny, we may be able to understand the comparative assessment that I referred to in “The Political Arrival of the East Indians,” which I repeated in my opening paragraphs above.

In a forthcoming column, I would argue that African Guyanese dissolved their fear of the “other side” when they supported the Working People’s Alliance from 1974 to 1992. If one confines one’s evaluation of the political behavior of each race group to their participation in electoral competitions, then it obfuscates this sacred period of present day Guyanese history that I have just made reference to. Mr. Dev may not have been in Guyana during the dialectical dissolution of the fear he attaches so much importance to in his understanding of electoral trends. But he is intellectually strong enough to comprehend it in its totality.
When a researcher underplays the positive roles race groups and classes played in the arrival of 1992, then history can be distorted.

The other equation that must be elaborated on is the Hoyte presidency. Space has run out, so that we will have to leave that discourse to a separate column. However, suffice it to say for this purpose that the Hoyte presidency did not come within the Guyanese tradition of unadulterated authoritarianism. In 1989, Mr. Hoyte had done some iconoclastically positive things that could account for the percentage he got in 1992.
When governments do bad things they are not supposed to get votes. The exception is Guyana.

---

---