Guyana 2000-2010: The violent balance sheet of a fascist regime

May 23, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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I have shifted my methodological focus from the theoretical model of elected dictatorship to elected fascism when analyzing the Jagdeo regime. From the time the ruling cabal shared state power with a group of narco-traffickers led by convicted baron, Shaheed Roger Khan, in the pursuit of gunmen held up in Buxton, Guyana has seen the accelerated transformation of a traditional authoritarian exercise of power into a open fascist modus operandi in which the term semi-fascist as a description of the Guyana Government has given way to full blown fascism
Whatever psychic contortion the ruling cabal underwent in its conspiratorial relations with the Khan enterprise, it has obliterated any intention it may have had about democratic pretence.
As the PPP Government/Jagdeo presidency enters its final lap, no one knows what will happen after the count begins at the close of the poll in the next general elections. One thing however, is certain; if the PPP loses the election, the succeeding government will not survive to the next day if there isn’t an independent judicial commission into the activities of the Jagdeo presidency from 2000 to 2011.
In the comparison of Guyanese tyrannies, the Burnham oligarchy could survive any attempt at tagging it with the label of fascism. The essential features of fascism were not characteristic of the Burnham Government though there were episodic presentations of the fascist mind. Under this regime, there are no obfuscating strategies to conceal the fascist outlays.
Fascist method of pursuing the preservation of total power is bold and shameless. In a previous column I have used a comparative examination of the assassination of Walter Rodney during the Burnham junta and Ronald Waddell in the age of PPP’s reign to delineate the traditional authoritarianism of the seventies from post-1992 fascism.
To my mind that case study still holds scholarly efficacy in proving that under the present degeneracy, fascism is the model we should use to understand the nature of state power. In the planning of the murder of Rodney, meticulous details were given attention.
The conspiracy revolved around the manufacture of circumstances that would create doubt in the minds of people all over the world as to the cause of death and the agents involved.
The plant inside the WPA lured Rodney with an explosive device outside of the Camp Street jail. After triggering the device to murder Rodney, state agents then promulgated the fiction that Rodney was involved in a radical attack on the prison.
This is old style authoritarianism. This is not the way fascists kill their opponents. In fascism there is a certain style of arrogance which is shaped to be defiant of the population. The fascist planners want the population to know that the state machinery was involved in the killing of opposition leaders. The intention is to drive fear in the population. This is a characteristic that is common to fascism but seems absent in traditional tyranny. In the assassination of Ronald Waddell, men with AK-47s using flares on their guns to light up the night, openly shot Waddell in front of seawall strollers on the highway.
In Rodney’s murder, the major factor at work was scheming and secrecy. In Waddell’s murder, the cabal wanted to send a message. The murder of Waddell did send a message, a message of enveloping intimidation which has now smothered the nation. Compare torture in the seventies and now. Rupert Roopnarine wrote in the media that when he and his WPA colleagues were charged with allegedly burning down the Ministry of National Development, they were not brutalized by the police. This is in stark contrast at the moment where torture is not only openly practiced but condoned through the adumbration of flippant and contemptuous attitudes by senior cabal leaders.
From the time Khan joined up with the ruling cabal and murder became a game gleefully played out by Khan on the altar of politics on which the ruling junta practiced the exercise of absolute power, the traditional methods of authoritarian politics in this land has been replaced by full-fledged fascism. The comparison of the PNC Government and PPP regime is now over.
There is no intellectual utility in pursuing the comparative examination. When juxtaposed, the present degenerates surely make Mr. Burnham come across as a leader who simply made mistakes.
The features of present day fascism in Guyana cannot be enumerated here but surely, in Guyana, fascism has entered into uncertain waters that even early European dictators would not have ventured into like sexual aberrations, sexual violence, colossal kleptomania, and narco-involvement. Only a change of government can save this tragic nation.

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