For Malcolm

Oct 18, 2009 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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My friend from the good old ROAR days, Malcolm Harripaul, posed a number of questions about the PPP after he was prompted to read my article “Democracy is not Coffee” by his friend, Freddy Kissoon who claimed that the article demonstrated I was a “PPP apologist”. I hope that Malcolm has also read my other articles over the last few years which Mr Kissoon also asserts betrays the same tendency. Those articles place the cited article in context.
The point I have been making is that it is the duty of the opposition to devise a strategy that would make them into a viable alternative to the incumbent PPP government. The fear of being voted out is the ultimate sanction in a democracy but in the face of an uninspired opposition that sanction is lost. An option is not an option if it is not a viable option and five years on the opposition benches and the 2006 campaign have convinced me that there is much that the opposition needs to do to become a viable option.
I believe there is widespread dissatisfaction among the traditional PPP voter but in my estimation the opposition refuses to adjust its mobilisation strategies to take advantage of that dissatisfaction. It appears to me that the opposition is more interested in the transitory “feel good” affects of cussing out the PPP rather than focusing on the tedious but instrumental actions of grassroot mobilisation. Some of the cussing out has been so perverse (for example the claim that the present regime constitutes a “dictatorship” worse than that of Mr Burnham’s) as to actually turn off some of the disaffected.
My frustration has been exacerbated because of the disappearance of the ethnic majority that had ossified our democratic possibilities and made many cynical of the possibilities of change. The new demographics that showed us to now be a nation of minorities created new opportunities and I felt that new strategies were demanded of the opposition. The cussing out has not stopped the PPP from continuing to mobilise beyond their traditional base and they have been notably successful in garnering hinterland support. Regarding strategy, for instance, I would hope that Malcolm still accepts if the Disciplined Forces were representative of our nation, this would go a far way in addressing the security dilemma of the PPP’s base support. Against a background of my constant lobbying for this initiative, the opposition has refused to take up this issue – and yet expect to crack the PPP’s base.
But Malcolm would know that this debate as to whether one should cuss out those on the “other side” versus focusing positively on one’s program addressing the interests of the target voter is an old one from the ROAR days. One of which I was always accused of being “soft” for preferring the latter course. With the dissolution of ROAR, occasioned by the emigration of its entire executive, I have focused on presenting our version of a substantive democracy appropriate to our nation, rather than cussing out anyone. Many a time have I invoked Foucault’s caution on the sterility of polemics and echoed, “Where has it ever produced an original idea?”
And original ideas are needed now in Guyana. Neither the PPP nor PNC are monolithic: the PNC has been demonstrating that in the public realm over the past few years. In the words of Gramsci, “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” There is hope for new ideas to percolate into the leadership corps but this will not occur under an onslaught – neither verbal nor physical. These assaults will only precipitate the reflexive closing of ranks that has been the reaction over the last half a century. We cannot, Guyana cannot, afford this eventuality.
I will now answer Malcolm’s questions, for old times’ sake. Malcolm asked whether in asserting that the PNC’s co-op socialism of the 70’s-80’s had destroyed even the attenuated liberal democracy practiced by the colonial British, don’t I think that the PPP’s more orthodox Russian-style communism (including party paramountcy, democratic centralism etc.) if implemented, would not have destroyed it more thoroughly? My answer to this hypothetical situation would be “Most assuredly, yes!”
But I believe that the question poses a false dilemma in that the actual situation on the ground was possibly much more nuanced than the black and white implication. I know this because in those critical years (including the years of critical support and attempts at a coalition) Malcolm was a staunch member first of the PYO and then the PPP. He chose never to join the PNC. Why?
Malcolm asked whether it would not have been better if the PPP would not have been better advised to seek UN help to confront the violent onslaught earlier in this decade. Of course! I called for this repeatedly at the time. I signed a letter to the UN Secretary General for an inquiry into the violence with the joint opposition and spoke at the Square of the Revolution for the Rule of Law to be returned to Guyana.
I have always accepted, and credited Mr Hoyte for the positive democratic changes he inaugurated after 1985 – albeit after much US pressure. But no, I do not believe that the actions of the PPP regime after 1992 justified the “mo fyaah, slow fyaah” strategy of the PNC after the 1997 elections. In fact, in addition to the reversal of the Hoytean downsizing of the Public Service that I mentioned earlier, Malcolm had assured us that even though many of the GDF officers had already cleared their desks after the PPP’s 1992 victory to his (Malcolm’s) chagrin, Dr Jagan retained them all. I do not believe that violence can be justified to precipitate political change in our fractured context: any “victory” will be a pyrrhic one.
I know that Malcolm is deeply disappointed with how matters political and social have evolved after 1992. So am I. In these matters I am greatly influenced by Gramsci who also faced great disappointments concerning political change in his Italy. To paraphrase him we may be pessimists because of intelligence, but will have to become optimists because of will: the challenge of Guyana is to live without illusions but without becoming disillusioned.
Our colleague Tarron Khemraj, one of the young founders of ROAR, recently critiqued a development strategy for Guyana but concluded: “the…discussion is premised on the assumption we would settle our intractable ethnic security dilemmas and implement a Constitution and electoral system conducive to co-operation among the various groups rather than conflict and alienation. Are our politicians mature enough?” I believe that “maturity” is demonstrated in a willingness to be positive rather than negative.

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