Do you remember the time?

Jul 08, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

This essay is not an analysis of the troubled times that the PNC has found itself in. That calls for separate treatment. If the PNC did not implode what would the politics of protest be like in Guyana today?
Surely, the state of affairs would have been different because at least we would have had a large opposition party whose voice of protest could have resonated among the disenchanted.
But even if the PNC was active, vocal and resonating, would that have been enough to raise the level of political consciousness that is presently needed in Guyana if the society remains as silent as it has been since the past four years?
Just what has gone through the head of Mr. Robert Corbin those past four years? Surely, the macabre politics of Mr. Corbin at the moment cannot be excused. But it must be asked if what has happened to Mr. Corbin is not a reaction to the incredulities he saw around him and he couldn’t understand and cope with them and that he simply gave up. This is not a time in Guyana for politics and Mr. Corbin, probably in strange ways, understood that and surrendered.
As the state degenerated, as power became more entangled in immoral and miasmic labyrinths, as the cancer of racial discrimination eat away at the fabric of Guyana, voices and bodies became invisible.
Was this the beginning of the end for protest and it took Mr. Corbin with it?
Whatever is your answer to this question, can it be denied that this is not the time for politics and protest in this tragic nation known for its ongoing tragedies? If your answer is no, then how do you account for the loneliness that Mr. Corbin has found himself in.
Again, let me repeat and emphasize that Mr. Corbin cannot be excused for a lack of vision in his leadership which I honestly believe is the true situation in the PNC but one must understand that when Mr. Corbin took over the leadership of the PNC, the voices of consciousness that were so needed in Guyana were absent and Mr. Corbin and his party stood alone.
This is not meant as an insult to the Alliance for Change. But just as I believe that Mr. Corbin lacks vision, I believe the AFC lacks dynamism and has failed to instill that consciousness that is needed in the Guyanese nation.
Today, Mr. Corbin’s leadership has failed, the AFC is still to find its dynamic soul, and the silent voices and invisible bodies are still silent and invisible. I come now to the possibility of a new PNC.
If tomorrow, there emerges a new dispensation in the PNC without Mr. Corbin and his acolytes, the question has to be asked – given the ubiquity of reticence in this land, can the PNC confront the nastiness of power and be successful on its own. The answer is no.
The PNC cannot and will not do it alone. We live in a bizarre time in this country. As the days go by and the weeks pass on, the evil of power shows itself in unbelievably ways. And no one shouts. No one denounces it. No one alerts us to what our country has become.
I do not write these opinions as an academic only. I was there when power was untamed, when power was destructive, when power was monarchial and I saw the energy that a society reacted with in confronting those ugly manifestations of power.
I write as an analyst who understood those times.
I am typing this essay as my daughter and I watch Michael Jackson memorial service and how appropriate it is to ask as Jackson did in his great song; “Do you remember the time.”
Do Guyanese remember the time when this nation fought dictatorship? Why are we not fighting it now? Even if we fault the PNC, where are the rest of us? Today, tomorrow and as the weeks unfold, this question must be asked. “What is wrong with the people of Guyana that we can stand by and watch the politicians that we elected to take our country into the future take it into the past?”
What is wrong with the people of this country that we can endure the most despicable, deplorable and devastating manifestations of unruly and absolute power and we refuse to blink an eye much less to pen a word or raise a voice?
It cannot be denied that many of the perverse acts that the present Guyana Government is allowed to get away with will not be tolerated in many, many part of this modern world. The Phoenix must be raised from the ashes .

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