Freddie Kissoon - Iconoclastically positive

Freddie Kissoon – Iconoclastically positive

May 17, 2008 Freddie Kissoon

In my piece for Monday last, I indicated that there were two forthcoming essays on the complex process that characterized the relationship of Africans with the closing years of Forbes Burnham and the positive directions of Hoyte from 1989 that may have changed the perceptions African Guyanese had of him.
Here now is the second one. It is doubtful that a majority of Guyanese would have voted for Hoyte. Guyanese have a protean political mind and because of that esoteric fact, their political attitudes are contradictory.
From my activities in the WPA, it would appear that a cross-section of Guyanese felt that the time had come for free and fair elections. Race didn’t matter. African Guyanese accepted that it was time for the long journey of crooked elections to come to an end. During his reign, Hoyte did not attract much admiration from the Guyanese society because they felt he was the inheritor of a dictatorship. Hoyte of course didn’t make things easier for himself. He was not a people’s president.

He wasn’t your typical West Indian politician. But typical West Indian politicians love to play politics with their supporters. Hoyte was not like that. He was one of the most straightforward politicians the Caricom region has produced.

The paradox of 1989 to 1992 is that though Hoyte was not perceived in romantic terms by the Guyanese people; he was respected by almost 100 percent of the Guyanese nation for the iconoclastically positive (the term I used in my Monday column) directions he went into.

As the sun began to set on his presidential career, Hoyte had done enough on the democratic front to gain the respect of even the East Indian population. It remains a fantastic irony in this country’s history that while he was President, the African community showed tremendous appreciation for the WPA, yet when it was time to vote, they stayed with Hoyte.

In my Monday thesis, I promised that I would examine that contradiction, not in terms of race, but looking at the essence of politics. Why did the WPA, GUARD, FITUG, and the PCD get tremendous support from the population yet Hoyte got a highly appreciated number of votes (42 %) at the 1992 elections? I think both the African and the East Indian did not vote race in 1992.

Hard as that is to accept, there were mysterious factors at work mostly of a political nature. Let us look at the role of African Guyanese in the final three years of Hoyte’s rule. They knew what Hoyte could have done for Guyana given his embrace of perestroika and glasnost. They saw a return of African middle class morality and aesthetics that have made the African middle class the most enlightened strata the Guyanese society has produced.

Hoyte had returned Guyana back to the days when morality had a presence in government. Many times Hoyte openly chastised his Ministers and top bosses in the public corporations when they had committed grievous wrongs. The army head was suspended after a businessman made a serious complaint against him. Minister Corbin was put on leave pending an allegation involving a businesswoman.

This writer knows of several cases where Hoyte gave judgement against his close aides after their accusers proved their allegations. One I remember involved Mr. Balwant Persaud who is now a known immigration consult in Canada.

On the other hand, Africans were distrustful of the PPP because of its long communist past. Analysts tend to forget to include this equation into their final conclusion about voting patterns of 1992.

Did Africans vote race or were there strong political motives for voting against the PPP in 1992? African Guyanese were initiated into a political culture that was anti-communist. They are an inherently religious people. They were the custodians of the administrative and aesthetic culture of the colonials.
They were heavily influenced by the British civil service codes. They had a traumatic experience with Dr. Jagan’s inflexible attempt to impose a communist system in Guyana in the sixties.

African Guyanese had a love-hate relationship with Jagan. They saw in him the love of country, a simple, honest man who didn’t talk down to people, and a politician who cared for the poor and powerless. But there was a deep mistrust of Cheddi Jagan by the urban strata. Jagan’s myopic, naïve and zealous embrace of communism left a bad taste in the mouths of African Guyanese.

These were people who grew up hearing their priests denounce the evil of communism. These were people who believed that Jagan would have rearranged a West Indian society into a Cuban model. They didn’t accept Jagan’s ideology although they had some admiration for his personal integrity.

In 1992, Jagan was an unchanged man. Throughout the history of the Patriotic Coalition for Democracy, Jagan insisted that any national government must have a socialist framework. Jagan appeared in the eyes of the urban masses as a man who will never change.

In 1992, they felt that Hoyte had done enough for him to be voted back in. There may be some weak areas in my theory which I will reply to if and when they are highlighted by my critics but my contention is that African Guyanese voted against Jagan in 1992 for political and not racial reasons. They saw some form of morality in Hoyte’s administration.

It would be interesting to do a comparative analysis of discipline in the Hoyte Government and what we have now.