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The tyranny of elected dictatorship in Guyana

Dec 21, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

This is a country populated mostly by people 35 years of age and under. Four years ago, the statistics showed that seventy five percent of the population was 35 years and under. Politically, that is both a good thing and a disadvantage. It is positive in the sense that the worst government in the English-speaking Caribbean that we have now in Guyana will not find it easy to keep lamenting on the refrain of PNC dictatorship to the young people. This means people will judge the present corrupt autocrats that control the administration of this land on the basis on their venal nature.
The PPP has lost the trump card that they treated as the largest diamond nugget in the world. From 1992 to about 2000, they regaled this nation with the stuck record of PNC dictatorship. And people bought that song. And they were right to do so. The PNC Government under Burnham (not President Hoyte) was indeed a dictatorship. Dr. Jagan from 1993 received tremendous goodwill from inside and outside of the country because people were glad to have another party run Guyana after 28 years of PNC Ministers.
As Guyana grew older and as a phantasmagoria of evil policies, autocratic edicts, appalling practices of anti-African racism and unbelievable and incredible levels of corruption enveloped Freedom House, the PPP and the Government of Guyana, no one ever wanted anymore to hear about a bad President named Forbes Burnham. He had become a saint after what they saw the PPP was capable of doing and did. Guyanese saw Ministers and party officials accumulating money in a one-year period that PNC leaders never got hold of even though they ran Guyana for 28 years.
The disadvantage in having such a young population is that they cannot make the comparison for themselves between past governments and the present junta. They have to read about it from others. For example, they do not know of a legislation named the National Security Act passed by the PNC Government under Mr. Burnham and how this very party that is now in Government reacted to it. But now this very party is passing a most obnoxious piece of fascist legislation – the right of the DPP to appeal against the verdict of a twelve-man jury in a High Court trial. I haven’t done the research but do many countries have this sort of perverted legislation? I guess many brutal dictatorships like Sudan, Iran and Cuba do?
Our young people have no memory of how the PPP behaved when it was in the opposition. They do not know of the violent strike, Opposition Leader, Dr. Jagan called against the Sugar Levy of 1977 which Dr. Jagan refused to abolish when he became President in 1992. They have no knowledge of the violence the PPP perpetrated on the sugar estates when Mr. Burnham was President. They have no idea of the strikes, protest, burning of cane-fields and demonstrations against the National Security Act by the PPP. This very Bill is a literal joke when compared to what the PPP is about to make into law.
An accused goes in front of a judge and jury. The state presents evidence of criminal action against the accused. The accused is freed after a judge’s summation and deliberation by a jury. But that person can remain in prison indefinitely because the DPP can appeal first to the Court of Appeal then the CCJ in Trinidad. This fascist Bill will become law and the Guyanese nation has itself to blame. As the PPP Government became a little bit fascist, we refused to confront it. As the PPP Government became fascist oriented, we refused to come together en-mass and move against it. As the PPP Government became openly semi-fascist, we watched and remained unmoved. Now fascism is an open policy of a government that has gone totally out of control. And we are about to have our fate sealed.
The French people have a saying – “People deserve the Government they get.” The Bar Association, the business community, the churches and other stakeholders will allow this Bill to be passed without even a whisper. The hopeless opposition parties will go into Parliament and debate it with the PPP while being reduced to fools in an arena that the PPP dominates. This is an evil Bill. It is designed to charge critics of the government with political offences and when decent juries acquit them, the elected dictators will keep them in jail. Should this latest act of fascism be the final straw? Will we finally go out there and make the Velvet Revolution in Guyana?

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