Researchers advance novel theories of Guyanese politics

Jun 28, 2009 News

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The Guyana Institute of Historical Research presented a number of papers that took an unusual angle on Guyanese politics.
Permanent Secretary Hydar Ally, traced the historic contribution of Dr. Cheddi Jagan and Janet Jagan to Guyana.

He told his audience that it is important for them to question the recent theories that have been going around in relation to the role of the PPP. He directed his audience to the presentations of Rastafarian activist, Tom Dalgetty and UG lecturer, Frederick Kissoon. Mr. Ally said that since the early forties, Dr. and Mrs. Jagan set out to liberate the Guyanese working class.
Highlighting the role of Dr. Jagan in leading the strike at the Enmore sugar estate that led to the killing of five sugar workers, now known as the Enmore martyrs, Mr. Ally spoke of the degradation of Guyana in the seventies and eighties.

He pointed to Guyana’s lowly position in the hemisphere, with only Haiti being below Guyana. He said it was the struggle of the PPP that has turned around the fortunes of the country.
The event was the annual conference at the CIDA building, main Street.
Ras Tom Dalgetty gave a historical review of the role of the great African-Guyanese in 20th century British Guiana up to Forbes Burnham.
He attributed the troubles of the sixties to the “racist government of Dr. Jagan” and urged his listeners to take a different perspective on the sixties from that which the PPP has perpetrated on the Guyanese people.
He questioned why is it that there can be an annual celebration of the strike of the Enmore Martyrs and not that which lasted 60 days in 1962. He suggested that the PNC should begin to commemorate that event.
In comparing Forbes Burnham and Desmond Hoyte, he takes the position that it was under Hoyte that Africans began to lose their resoluteness and purpose.

Jean La Rose of the Amerindian People’s Association, critiqued the Amerindian Act and argued that it brought no sovereignty to the Amerindian people of the lands that belong to them.
She told her audience that contrary to what the Act sets out to do, miners have more control of the land in Amerindian communities than the native people. She cited several occasions when miners would turn up with mining permits and the Amerindian people were powerless to remove them.
However, she sees a new day dawning because eight Amerindian communities have resorted to the courts to protect their reserves and the ruling was in their favour.
UG lecturer, Frederick Kissoon offered two papers, one on trade unionism in present-day Guyana and racism, and the East Indian community.
Kissoon offered three explanations for the hostility that the Government shows towards the TUC. One can be a vendetta because of Labour’s refusal to side with the PPP’s struggle against the PNC in the seventies and eighties.

Another is the industrial action taken early in the nineties, which may have engendered an uncontrollable paranoia in the PPP.
He suggested with the demise of the WPA and the implosion in the PNC, the TUC stands as the only source of opposition to elected dictatorship and is targeted by the Government for hostile treatment.
Kissoon asserted that the crippling of the Critchlow Labour College was an unforgivable act.
In his second presentation in the post-lunch session, Kissoon traveled on novel ground in his explanation as to why there is no Indian rejection of bad government by the PPP. Kissoon posits that unlike the African middle class which was in existence long before the PNC came into being and who became alienated with the authoritarian direction of the Burnham Government, he describes the unique relation between the East Indian population and the PPP Government.

According to Kissoon, prior to the 1992 election, there was no Indian middle class. He argued that only two Indian classes existed then – the rural proletariat and the traditional landed petty bourgeois.
Kissoon said that the PPP invented two classes, an Indian middle class which it created by inserting Indians into traditional African middle sector occupations and a questionable class he referred to the lumpen petty bourgeois.
He referred to this stratum as an underground class whose income is derived from unorthodox engagements.
He said that this class is very wealthy and acts as a protector of the PPP Government. Kissoon is of the view that if the Indians are to turn their backs on the PPP Government, such action will come from the rural proletariat and Guyana’s traditional Indian business people. The entire proceedings are available on disc at the institute.

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