Guyana’s sociology has suddenly disappeared

Apr 03, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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The report of the UN consultant, Gay Mc Dougall, on racial divisions in Guyana and her open castigations of the role of the Government of Guyana in maintaining a climate of ethnic polarisation with its concomitant preservation of race preferences was met with acerbic condemnation by the Government.
The government did not concede even half a point to Ms. Mc Dougall. There are two forms of reply that the government can take. These two arguments are water-proof.  You have to choose one over the other.
The first outline lies in the interpretation of the PPP of what was the true nature of the PNC control of Guyana. Literally thousands of speeches and written materials are contained in the PPP archives about racial discrimination as a policy against East Indians.
One does not know where to start when using quotes to show how widespread was the PPP classification of the PNC Government as a racist administration. I have in front of me, dozens of articles about that claim. I will briefly cite two; “Guyana’s Road to Socialism: Political Programme of the PPP,” August, 1979; and “The Road to National Unity,” October 1983.
The PPP position on the PNC rule from the time it came to power was graphically clear and unambiguous; it is a government that discriminates against the Indian community. The PNC control came to an end in 1992. Sixteen years after that, a UN consultant accuses the PPP Government of doing what the PPP castigated the PNC regime of perpetrating on the nation – practising ethnic favourtism.
The present administration has angrily rejected Ms Mc Dougall’s assessments. Out of such repudiation comes the alternative thesis. If the PPP Government is not pursuing a policy of ethnic marginalization, then there can only be one conceptual conclusion.
It means that only an African-dominated Government used the instrument of racial preferences when it was in power. There cannot be any other dimension to this debate. All the politicians from the opposition side, observers and commentators that have criticised the PPP’s attitude to the Mc Dougall report have missed the point in the PPP’s reply to Mc Dougall. It is that the PPP is clearly saying that only Africans in the PNC Government played the race card.
The PNC was seen as an African Party by the PPP and it alienated Indians as part of its overall framework for ruling. But the Indian-dominated PPP has not continued in that vein. The Indian-controlled PPP avoided the direction of ethnic favouritism when it came to power. No matter how you look at it, there is only one dimension to the PPP’s reply – Africans discriminated when in government, Indians are not doing the same.
If a scholar accepts this explanation by PPP leaders then Guyana’s sociology has disappeared and we are in an idyllic state where democracy, equality, State generosity, harmony and goodwill characterise Guyana’s social structure.
What the PPP has done then is to wash away not hundreds but thousands of scholarly analyses from academics and international organisations from the time Jagan and Burnham parted company in the early 1950s right up to 2009 that sees Guyana’s sociology as being dominated by the race factor which is perpetuated by the two main political parties.
This has been the judgement of all non-partisan, objective researchers who have analysed the recurring instabilities of this country.
More important to note is that since 1992 the election statistics have scientifically supported the overall findings of so many research efforts that have proven that Guyana’s nemesis is racial polarisation. The African PNC has not been able to attract even  two percent of the Indian vote.
The same challenge faces the PPP. Out of this comes the practice of realpolitik on the part of the PNC and PPP which any investigator with common sense can detect but which the PPP claims does not exist. That realpolitik centres on party survival when in power. If the PNC did not favour African constituencies then it was courting the alienation of its own people. It chose practical politics over nationalism. It favoured Africans over Indians, and the PPP screamed out for 28 years.
The PPP is doing the same thing. Practical politics have driven it to be nice to the communities that continuously vote in into power – the East Indians. This is the tragedy of Guyana. But according to the PPP, we are all living inside a fiction that the PNC has neatly imprisoned us in- that the PPP is racist. There is no racial polarization.
The PPP is full of Obamas. The PPP is an anti-racist party that has made its citizens happy. Believe it or leave it!

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