Eight hours

Oct 15, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Human behaviour does not accord with scientific guidelines. Human behaviour is not deterministic. People like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, and in a different context, Rudolph Hess and Albert Speer from the Nazi regime, have proven that it does not, so the argument need not go on.
Human behaviour, however, does follow broad patterns. And this has been so throughout the ages. In the case of power, the tradition has been that a prolongation of hardened rule tends to result in the withering away of creativity, the loss of innovative thinking, the setting in of confusion, mediocrity and breakdown.
Normally, after ten years in authority, semi-autocratic or authoritarian regimes begin to lose their cutting edge. They drift from one inane policy to another. The main actors fight among themselves; they find it difficult to sustain growth and productivity and image and credibility quickly disappear.
Even in countries where a democratic ambience exists, a long hold on power brings mental stagnation. The Conservatives in Ontario, Canada and Tony Blair in the UK may be examples of this type.
If one looks at the Forbes Burnham Government by 1980, Mr. Burnham had literally exhausted his control of the political environment. His economy wasn’t doing well and the people around him were alienated. Walter Rodney’s challenge appeared roughly 14 years after Burnham took power. To be more accurate, WPA was born in 1974 and even then, after decade of power, Burnham still had some ideas left in him.
By 1980, when the assassination of Rodney occurred, Burnham was literally sinking in a sea of mediocrity. After sixteen years of domination, the end had come for Burnham. It was tragic that Rodney had to be a victim of the regime’s diminished vitality.
Take the Republicans in the U.S. After eight years of relentless unilateralism, the Republican agenda has lost it steam. Its chief architects have run out of intellectual energy. If the Republicans win the presidency and the Congress, the US Government will stumble from one domestic policy unto another; from one foreign affairs blunder to another until there is a big disaster.
Simply put, the Republicans are like a well that has run dry. The identical situation exists with the PPP Government. It is sixteen years since Freedom House has been in control of a politically and racially divided country that is known to be one of the poorest states in the global economy.
It is a difficult country to run and it needs very broad-minded people with brilliant ideas and independent minds.
Look at the background of the people in control of Guyana. The policy-making machinery comes from the 15-member executive committee of the PPP. One of them started her career in the forties (My God! Yes, in the forties before seventy-five percent of the Guyanese population was born).
Three of them are from the sixties, and the rest, with the exception of one, are activists from the seventies. The President is about to chalk up his decade in power. The Prime Minister, the International Trade Minister, Home Affairs Minister, Local Government Minister, Presidential Advisor on the Environment, Presidential Advisor on Science, Presidential Advisor on Governance, Presidential Advisor on Security have all been in power for sixteen years.
The rut has set in. The collapse is imminent. The signs are ubiquitous. On Monday, where I live, we had blackout for eight hours. Guyana has gone back to the four hours of daily blackouts that we had in the seventies, eighties and early nineties. Secondary teachers are scarcer than elephants; desks and benches remain in short supply in most schools; tertiary education lies in ruin.
The Demerara Harbour Bridge reminds me of the time President Hoyte took my uncle, Dr. Leslie Mootoo, a pathologist, to visit the collapsed structure.
The new Skeldon factory may turn out to be a nightmare. It may have to resort to mangoes instead of cane. The Berbice Bridge opening remains uncertain; the roads are deteriorating rapidly as when Burnham ran out of money; the new traffic lights never got going.
Killing people in Guyana is such an easy task today. Hitmen in Guyana do their thing openly; unafraid of the police force.  The security forces do not mind torturing those in their custody.
This is Guyana after sixteen years of the same party in control. Human behaviour does not follow along the path of scientific prediction; but human behaviour does follow broad trends. One of those trends is that when a government does not know how to use power and it misuses that power and does so for a long time, then the law of diminishing return steps in.
The Harbour Bridge is being repaired. It will deteriorate again because those in power have deteriorated.

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