“Are we doing something wrong?”

Oct 05, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Before she had committed herself to the statement that Dr. David Hinds is a wildly, extremist anti-PPP character, it would have been wise for Mrs. Jagan to ask herself if there was something wrong that the PPP Government had done or is doing for David Hinds to have become anti-PPP.

Surely, Mrs. Jagan had to know that Hinds was very active against the Burnham dictatorship and paid dearly for his activism. Just one moment of pause to ask that question can change the politics of this country.

When Captain Gerry Gouveia wrote in the newspapers that the two anti-crime helicopters were a bad buy, he was attacked for his comments. Prior to that observation, Mr. Gouveia was not known to have coined even the most innocuous opinion critical of the PPP Government or President Jagdeo.

Before the President had rushed to disagree with Mr. Gouveia, it would have been wise for him to ask why Gouveia of all persons would want to publicize his feelings about the helicopters. Since that fiasco about the purchase, Mr. Gouveia has not pursued any anti-government feelings.

On the contrary, just two days before the so-called consultation on the EPA, he expressed his approval of the President’s stance of not signing.

The Government did not lose a friend in the Private Sector Commission Chairman, but if he did, then he had itself to blame because he ignores some of the cardinal rules in politics.

It is the contempt for these valuable principles in the exercise of power that no doubt caused embarrassment to the President during the launching of the Guyana Times newspaper.

In what is now known as the Yesu Persaud remarks, Mr. Persaud during his presentation at the ceremony expressed the hope that what Queens Atlantic got in concession from the state other investors would receive.

The President reacted angrily and without subtlety, accusing Mr. Persaud of lack of familiarity with the laws on tax concessions. The rest is now history. Most Guyanese are familiar with subsequent events. Mr. Persaud was dead right.

There is a type of sickening mediocrity, in the exercise of power by the President, his Ministers and other top personnel, that has a self-destructive boomerang about it.

All of that could disappear in seconds if the commonsensical question could be asked: “Why has he/she said that; is it something that we have done?”

The Mighty Sparrow once sang that sixty million Frenchmen could not be wrong. Are the thousands that stood with the PPP from 1968 to 1992 and who are now critical wrong? Look at the list.

This writer knows of the great role the Stabroek News played during the demand for free and fair elections. The PPP took the paper’s editor and made him the Chronicle’s chief after they won the ’92 poll.

Mr. Miles Fitzpatrick was one of the PPP Elections Commissioners. Today, he is alienated from the Government. Is he wrong not to support the regime? Is every comment made by the Stabroek News an act of mischief?

I was once told outside of Bakewell’s by one of the leading policy-makers of the PPP that Andaiye is a racist. Such a statement would never have been made if that commonsensical question was asked.

This is a woman that was married to a white UG professor and spent more than two decades fighting alongside the PPP. We could go on with names like Professor Clive Thomas.

The PPP’s union, GAWU, should ever be grateful to him. What about people like Lincoln Lewis, Mike Mc Cormack, the entire leadership of the WPA and countless others? Are they wrong in the condemnation of many of the policies of the PPP Government and Mr. Jagdeo?

What about Father Malcolm Rodrigues? Has the question been asked as to whether “we have done something that makes Father Rodrigues so upset?”

No one in the PPP has stopped and asked the question why thousands who stood with the PPP over three decades prior to its 1992 election victory are either angry at them, very critical of them or would like to see the PPP go. As more people turn their backs on the PPP, the tragedy deepens. What is this tragedy?

As the support base of the PPP dwindles, the PPP leadership gets more truculent. The perfect example was the Gouveia observation.

Since he was not a PPP detractor, since he was not known for sermonizing against the PPP or Mr. Jagdeo, his opinion could have been ignored. But no? Every citizen that voices a dissenting judgement must be confronted because he/she is an enemy.

Someone from the top layer of the PPP needs to ask that question. And if honestly answered, it could start a new beginning in Guyana.

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