Silence and chagrin

Feb 25, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Some people have gone silent. A year or two ago you could have read comments and letters in the newspapers from intellectuals who had no formal contact with the government, except David Dabydeen, our Ambassador to UNESCO but felt obliged to write in favour of the PPP administration because they thought it was a government that should be supported.
Today, not one academic, scholar or person of national standing in or out of Guyana who is purely independent of the state sectors or who does not rely on Government’s patronage for investments publicly sides with the Jagdeo presidency. Chagrin has stopped the flow of their pen.
It must be a humiliating experience for the leaders of any government to open the newspapers and see tons of letters assessing the ruling party and the President in glowing terms but they come from a propaganda factory operated by the Chronicle and GINA. What an atrocity that this government cannot hold a public symposium or a television programme and get a UG or UWI lecturer or an independent person to sit on the panel and defend the policies of Mr. Jagdeo and the PPP. I lived under the PNC when it was in power and many intellectuals in the society were willing to write in praise of the personality of Burnham, and they were not state employees.
The PNC has taken a retreat to look at itself. It is time the PPP does that too. And when the big wigs meet they must not try to fool themselves. Sadly, whenever that retreat comes, that is what they will do. One after another, the speaker will take the floor and talk about the genius of the PPP and what an incorruptible, working class-oriented party the PPP is that has taken Guyana to heights that many countries have failed to do.
No matter how they love the PPP, its most ardent fans must know that this is the tragedy of the PPP, It refuses to acknowledge its mistakes and mishaps; analyse them and try bravely to correct them. If the PPP ever attempts such a task, it will confound the critics and the ideas and perspectives will flow; citizens will begin to see the PPP in a different light
The PPP is incapable of such critical reflections. Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Jesse Jackson and Barack Obama will not get the PPP to philosophise on the nature of power. If they try, they will all fail. This indeed is the disaster that has enveloped Guyana. This is Guyana’s permanent tragedy.
I see no one, absolutely no one in the present PPP, not leadership level only, but in the wider PPP, who has the gift, vision, leadership skills, mental strength and uniqueness to say that this party will look at itself and do things that will bring support from all the stakeholders in the land.
I saw that in the WPA with Rodney. I saw that in the PNC with Hoyte. There is a little bit of that in Trotman and Ramjatttan. We thought we would have seen that with Jagdeo. But it wasn’t to be.
This is a good nation with wonderful people. For a poor, obscure Third World territory, Guyana has one great thing going for it; its people are nice, creative, preserving, resilient and good at heart. Its young people are talented and promising. I see them everyday at UG. Give them a country to work with and they will put us on the Caribbean map again. No Caribbean nation that has been through what we have endured with Jagan and his nonsense in the sixties for seven years, the 17 year madness of the Burnham regime and now 17 years of equal insanity by another PPP Government would have survived without disintegrating.
Yet Guyana with leadership that is morally decomposed and politically hopeless, soldiers on. This is my country and I will not leave it. I am staying. I am saying boldly that if the PPP can show this nation a Barack Obama, my pen and voice will be in his/her service. I doubt he/she will emerge. Not from the PPP.
The independent voices of support are gone. Rickey Singh writes his thing on CARICOM affairs. David Dabydeen has moved on, no doubt still fuming at what happened to the paper of a man he admired, David De Caires and at a Guyanese giant that he too adores, Yesu Persaud.
No independent mind comes forward in support of the party of Cheddi and Janet Jagan that has entered its seventeenth year in power. At the breakfast table, the leaders sip their coffee and read a newspaper full of daily praise for Mr. Jagdeo that no one buys.

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Silence and chagrin

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