WHAT IS LEFT OF THE LEFT IN THE PPP

Oct 15, 2009 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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There is no contest of ideas taking place within the People’s Progressive Party. There is just a contest of individuals, each aspiring to be the party’s presidential candidate for the 2007 elections.

Today as you examine the PPP, you are not confronted with a party in which there is a great and endless debate about the organizing ideas which should guide the party and the government in the administration of the country.

You are not confronted with factions within the party each with their own ideological and policy agenda who are prepared to present these as being the best means of consolidating democracy and bringing benefits to the working class.

There is a sterility of debate within the PPP. What is taking place within the PPP is a struggle for leadership, between individuals. But just what do the various contestants stand for? What are their respective ideological orientations? On which side of the political divide do they stand on? In fact, the central question is just what does each of them stand for. What principles does each of them support?

What we have within the PPP is a struggle of like-minded individuals for the party’s nomination. There is hardly any attempt being made within the party to distinguish the contestants in relation to their political philosophy.

The contest is thus about who is fit to lead. The contest is about personal attributes of leadership, rather than about what each person stands for and how what they stand for will make a difference.

In many respects, this situation has historical antecedents. The pressures that were brought to bear on the PPP during the sixties eventually forced that party to lose office and also to make a decision about its future orientation.

The party became Marxist Leninist and committed to a disciplined approach which involved the routing of the petty bourgeoise elements from the party. The PPP converted to a Marxist Leninist outfit and thus to a particular world view which informed it struggles on the domestic front.

Even within this ideological straightjacket, however, there was within the PPP a healthy contest of ideas about the nature of the struggle against imperialism and the appropriateness of tactics within the party. There was for example a division within the party during the seventies as to how the PNC was to be engaged. Some persons felt that tactically critical support was limited and felt that the only way forward was to have a united anti-imperialist front.

With the collapse of the communist empire in 1989, former leftists turned right. In many cases there has been a wholesale abandonment of the cause of the left. This has produced a great band of political carpetbaggers and opportunists. The consequence of this abandonment of this process has been the identification with the personality cult rather than the cult of ideas.

The PPP will eventually choose someone to lead the party. Fortuna will play an important role in that decision. Not everything can be reduced to deliberate calculation. But how different will that person be from the others who have similar aspirations to lead the PPP.

There is not much difference because the PPP has abandoned the Left. The party has been in government for seventeen years and its governments have been unable to break free of the grip of western imperialism.

All the developmental models that the PPP has developed since 1992 have been models that emphasize an economy and political system that is far from the left. The working class in Guyana is still struggling for a living wage while the economy is benefiting handsomely a handful of individuals who may one day own the whole of Guyana.

These are lean times for the Left throughout the world. But it is also a time when the Left could take note of those who are genuinely faithful to the cause of the Left as opposed to those who will have abandoned the struggle and conceded that history has ended and capitalism has triumphed.

If there is anything left of the Left in the PPP, is not distinguishable. And this is why there is all this talk about third term and about who is suited to lead the PPP into the 2011 elections. This is why this debate is about individual attributes rather than about the philosophy of the candidates.

And this is why there is not much of a difference between those who are aspiring to lead Guyana.

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