Evasive politics

Nov 21, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I was doing some shopping in a Regent Street store and as I was leaving, entering was someone well known in the Guyanese society. He wanted to chat and chat we did. Then he made an intriguing point and immediately after made a request of me.
He said to me; “Freddie have you noticed of late Henry Jeffrey has been writing letters in the newspapers?” I nodded in the affirmative. Then he went on; “But he doesn’t say a thing about his experience in the Government after all those years; you have a topic there, Freddie.”
I informed the gentleman that I have responded to Dr. Jeffrey before particularly one letter of the former Minister that I found shockingly deceptive, and egregiously shapeless.
Dr Jeffrey, in tracing the politics of the PNC and the PPP and their respective roles in Guyana’s sad history concluded that he doesn’t think there has ever been a PNC or PPP politician who would have ever planned and executed, while in government, a policy whose deliberate intention was to cause harm.
Dr. Jeffrey is essentially a politician and as such his words may have designs that are intended to maximise his schemes and plans. But for those who study Guyanese political sociology and contemporary Guyanese history, it appears more than naïve but dangerously misleading to say that in the their exercise of power from 1957 to the present, PNC and PPP political elites have not sought to do things to this country that were intended to hurt the constituencies and by a logical spin off, the nation, of those that criticised and opposed them.
In that column of mine, I offered examples from both governments. In the PNC era, it was a heartless action on the part of those who planned the assassination of Walter Rodney. Under the PPP, it is my belief that in locating the Berbice Bridge away from New Amsterdam, the intention was to weaken a community that the PPP sees as never being able to win over.
I have read all the correspondences of former Minister Jeffrey since he left (or was asked to leave) office. Two particular pieces interest me; one of August 7, 2009, “As an initial step, we need to understand and attempt to resolve the concerns of the contending sides.” The other, of August 24, 2009, “Anyone cognizant with the workings of oligarchies should not be surprised Corbin has been returned as leader.” Both letters appeared in the Stabroek News.
On reading those assessments one would not believe that Dr. Jeffrey’s entire political career has been spent in the oligarchic world of the PNC and PPP. With regards to the latter, he served in their government as a Minister for almost seventeen years. I can understand how that gentleman in the store felt.
Why isn’t Dr Jeffrey analyzing the exercise of power in the Government he served for almost seventeen years? If both sides in the political divide must endeavour to meet the legitimate expectations of each other and if oligarchy is the name of the game that has allowed leaders like Mr. Corbin to hold on to the power, then what was Dr. Jeffrey doing all those years when he was a senior Minister under Presidents Cheddi and Janet Jagan and President Bharrat Jagdeo?
Shouldn’t Dr. Jeffrey write history by telling us who or what was the Civic Component? Dr. Jeffrey was a member of the Civic Component in what Dr. Jagan and the PPP leadership frenetically asserted was a coalition government.
How did the Civic relate to the PPP? What measure of power did the Civic possess? What eventually happened to the Civic? The PPP still maintained that the Government is a coalition between the Civic Component and Freedom House. No one, not even when Dr. Jagan was President, believed that after 1992, the Government of Guyana was a joint effort between the PPP that won the poll and an amorphous, invisible entity named the Civic Component.
This is a myth in Guyanese politics that Dr. Jeffrey has a large obligation to write about. There was never a solidified organisation by the name of the Civic Component.
What happened is that the Americans insisted that Dr. Jagan share power with business and civil society groupings if he won power in 1992. It was a condition imposed on Dr. Jagan in order to get American support should he win.
Dr. Jagan then outsmarted the Americans by hand-picking a few prominent names, Dr. Jeffrey included, and subordinating them to the overall command of the PPP. Many of these so-called Civics became integrated into the PPP’s structure, chief among them was Leslie Ramsammy.

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