Freddie Kissoon - The PPP is a Samsonite factory

Freddie Kissoon – The PPP is a Samsonite factory

Jun 15, 2008 Freddie Kissoon

Why did Barack Obama outshine Mrs. Clinton and achieve history in the US? Before February 2008, Mrs. Clinton was the princess of the Democratic Party.
To think that anyone could have conceivably erased the penetration of the Clintons in the Democratic Party was not a thing that would not have been whispered about much less openly discussed.
The key to Obama’s success is that he painted Mrs. Clinton as a politician with baggage. In a country dying for a break with the past, Mr. Obama’s message struck a chord with young voters.
Obama infused the American people with the idea that this lady had eight years of experience in the White House and in that time she became an establishment player with tentacles in the corporate world.
She was a political figure who had a past which made her untrustworthy. The stain of baggage is one that politicians all over the world are vulnerable to.
Voters prefer people with a clean slate. I remember when Mr. Corbin became the leader of the PNC after Mr. Hoyte’s death, I did a three-part series on him and concluded that because of his past, his tenure would not be marked by widespread acceptance.
In the 2001 election, the judgement of many advisors to the PNC was that it would be better for the image of the PNC and its electoral prospects if the PNC entered the contest with a fresh face as its lead candidate. In other words, put someone to fight the PPP that didn’t have baggage.
The baggage stain of the PNC has been one of the strong points of the PPP over the past decade and a half. Every PPP organizer would say to those willing to listen to them – look at the past of the PNC; many of their leaders have been surrounded by scandals. Today, the baggage tag cannot stick.
The PPP carries much more weight than what the PNC had to move around with when that party administered the affairs of the nation.
Numerous occasions on this page, I have made the observation that the PNC ran Guyana for twenty-eight years and the PPP is into its sixteenth year yet there have been less than twenty-eight scandals in the PNC Government but more than that number in the PPP regime since 1992.
As the PPP gets older in the control seat, the vulgarities of the PNC days are receding. You can now count on your fingers the nasty controversies of the PNC epoch under both Burnham and Hoyte.
There are the rigged elections of 1968, 1973, 1980, 1985. The fraudulent referendum of 1978 is another one. You have the Teekah, Koama and Rodney murders. The Jim Jones story has to be counted.
Early in Burnham’s rule there was financial skullduggery surrounding a company named Global Agri. The Burnham Government also arrested people for treason.

Mr. Corbin found himself in hot water twice during Hoyte’s presidency. You count these up and they are outnumbered by the crescendo of venalities that mark the 16 years of the PPP’s governorship of this land.

I just don’t know where to begin. We know about the stone scam. The floating wharf was a mess. In 2004, we had the duty free scandal. A building mysteriously caught fire when an audit was about to begin. There is the disgrace behind the printing of the laws of Guyana by a certain firm in New York.
A well-known political activist was charged for treason. Another prominent critic was openly assassinated in front of his home. Yet another activist is in the remand of the Camp Street jail on incitement to commit acts of violence.
A Minister and two of his siblings were brutally murdered in what does not look like a run-of-the-mill robbery (this writer absolutely rejects the theory of robbery). A woman cried out that she was sexually assaulted in an office. It went uninvestigated.

In January 2005, we had the great floods. The probable cause was the over-topping of the Lama Conservancy. No official inquiry as yet.

Between 2002 and 2004, there were widespread accusations in this country that the Government was involved in extra-judicial killings.

The Roger Khan saga remains the largest infamy to date. Not to be forgotten are the various visa imbroglios.
A mother claimed that her daughter was sexually molested after she was supposed to be escorted to her home by a top PPP monarch.

The unbecoming conduct of a Minister continues without him being disciplined. We seem to forget about the ugliness of bogus milk being given to school children.

The Sanata divestment deal is the latest in this long, long list. Can the PPP talk about baggage during the next election campaign?

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