Fascism takes shape in Guyana

Mar 21, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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My categorization of the Guyana Government as semi-fascist and an elected dictatorship goes back to around 2004. By that time, it was clear to me the PPP was shaping its administrative culture along the lines of traditional authoritarianism with elements of new forms of tyranny. It was for this reason, I opposed Ravi Dev’s definition of dictatorship in a debate between his column and mine. Dev attempted to prove that the PPP Government was not a dictatorial regime after he listed the typology of Kark Liebknecht. My rebuttal was that Leibknecht wrote his delineation of dictatorship in the late 19th century and it is no longer applicable to post the WW2 world
It is outside the scope of this column to expand on the new techniques in the maintenance of dictatorship since the demise of the old fascist European autocracies. Suffice it to say, Third World Governments have descended to lower levels of bestialities that traditional fascist tyrannies did not go. European fascism (and I will include communism under the rubric of fascism because they are essential variants of the same European ideological fountain) emerged out of the failure of the Enlightenment to bring progress to Europe. Fascist ideologues therefore were using philosophical values to advance their paradigms of the alternative life. This explains why one of the great philosophers of all time (Martin Heidegger) saw purpose and destiny in the Third Reich.
There were serious European values that underpinned fascism/communism. Hitler or Stalin would not have tolerated sexual brutalities on the part of their Ministers. It would have been punishable by either demotion or banishment. Fascism is no longer represented in any government, but communism is. And those governments have incorporated this European value in their tyrannical rule. In both China and Cuba, members of the governing parties would be severely punished for sexual coercion. This is what is missing in the newer forms of dictatorship.
In Guyana, sexual adventurism of the most shocking manifestation is tolerated in the corridors of power. Briefly, there is the introduction of the hand of death in the new dictatorship in the Third World, particularly since the seventies, where narcotic monsters are used by the state to perpetuate their authoritarian rule.
In dictatorships, including Guyana, drug traffickers target critics of the ruling regimes including the press. My contention, which I have repeated on this page and at academic conferences, is if the head drug baron was not neutralized, he would have directed violence against opposition parties and the private media, both electronic and print. There is still the belief floating out there among a large percentage of Guyanese that Ronald Waddell was a victim of the new techniques of the new dictatorship we see in the post WW2 world
This has been a long introduction to the main adumbration of this essay and that is the recently passed legislation that gives the DPP powers to appeal a High Court decision in a long list of criminal matters is essentially the deepening of semi-fascism in Guyana. Looked at from the angle of what tyranny was like in early 20th century Europe, this may be more than semi-fascism but fascism itself (without the civilizing values of 19th century Europe which must be borne in mind at all times when we discuss fascist government in Guyana at the moment).
The legislation is the turning point in the degeneracy of the PPP Government and I believe it is based on the impending fear in the corridors of power that there may be an attempt at a Velvet Revolution in Guyana. With such fascist legislation in place, elected dictatorship can imprison its nemesis-activists permanently, because as the law refuses to bend to political dictates and popular leaders are freed through the legal system, this legislation becomes the dues ex machina for the little Guyanese tyrants. Dictatorship in Guyana cannot succeed in jailing people using the independent judicial system. The present little despots know this.
They saw how a jury twice refused to convict Arnold Rampersaud under Burnham. And they saw under their own dictatorship, how a jury twice refused to convict Mark Benschop. The little oligarchs know that no jury in a free trial will imprison popular leaders who take a stand against fascism, thus the new powers of the DPP.
This is truly a sickening Bill that has placed this government in the category of brutal Latin American autocracies. It is a nauseating, sickening undermining of traditional legal democracy that we have enjoyed in the Caribbean since Independence. It should be opposed by every child, woman, man in this country, and anyone who has Guyanese nationality.
Fascism is taking shape in this country. Let us stand up against it before it makes Pinochet look like a little boy.

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