Are human beings fundamentally robotic?

Jul 01, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

At the wreath-laying ceremony to mark the beginning of Labour Day, I asked a person who was once powerful in the Forbes Burnham Government, why no one could have intervened and stopped some of the obvious self-destructive policies of the PNC that made the PPP’s hold over East Indians hypnotic. This was in May of this year.
It marks the most recent inquiry of mine on this subject. For years now I have been asking a wide range of personalities who had a personal or working relation with Mr. Burnham why they couldn’t warn him that his excesses were weakening his power in the face of a relentless combined opposition of WPA and PPP.
The answers have all been the same— we spoke to Burnham but he wouldn’t listen. In the main they were right.
But the question remains – how many of them were prepared to persist with their complaints? They just watched as Burnham moved from one extreme act to another and the PPP grew stronger as did Jagan’s stranglehold over the Indians. Elvin Mc David told me that the one, crucial mistake Burnham made was his studied plan to confront the WPA.
He believed it was the factor that became Burnham’s nemesis. Burnham ruled from 1964 to 1985, and in that period, egregious authoritarian policies were heaped upon the nation, and like robots, the PNC leaders just watched on helplessly.
Looking back now, PNC stalwarts from that era would tell me that Burnham shouldn’t have done this and shouldn’t have done that. For many analysts, the PPP’s arena of advantage was widened by millions of miles when Burnham forced compulsory national service on Indian youths.
One could just imagine what went through Burnham’s mind. He pondered that why couldn’t Indian youths go into the interior and experience hinterland life for three months. He thought to himself that they should not think they were so superior, that it was an activity suited for African people only.
Burnham missed an instructive point in one area. It wasn’t the concept of national service that was bad. It was the control that went terribly wrong. You just cannot put university students into the bush and have untrained personnel take control of them.
There was bound to be abuse. And young women claimed they were abused, among them the daughter of a nationally eminent educator (now deceased) Rudy Luck and national poet (now deceased), Mahadai Das (who told me about her incident.)
I went to National Service at Kimbia, rebelled over the madness I saw and got secretly shipped to Georgetown at Camp Ayanaganna where I spent 29 days in prison.
These were the things that made Jagan and the PPP such big names even though the WPA was a morally superior anti dictatorship organization. The same record is playing out with the PPP at the moment. My guess is that the PPP will lose the next general election to a rainbow coalition and perhaps may never rise again because most of its leading cadres will not survive prosecution from a judicial inquiry into the abuse of power.
As soon as the crown falls to the ground, the robots will give you their analyses. You would hear that Jagdeo shouldn’t have done this or that and that such and such a policy was a terrible mistake. You will hear the old refrain – Jagdeo didn’t listen, wouldn’t listen. But did these robots do anything to steer Jagdeo and the PPP Ministers from the fascist extremism that now characterize the exercise of power in this land.
Patrick Manning comes to mind. Manning was spending money like it was going out of style in a county with limited resources; he was becoming unpopular. He embarked on a macabre decision. In the election before the last one, even with an unpopular Panday, if there wasn’t a split in the UNC with the formation of a new party, he would have lost the election.
PMN leaders had to know this. They had to know that Manning had become an electoral liability. Yet no one stopped Manning from calling a national poll two and a half years before it was due. The rest is now history. Now PNM leaders are mad with Manning but at the time of his crazy decision were they brave enough to talk to him?
Or they just remained robotic and let Manning do whatever he wanted to. I ask readers to remember this essay. As soon as the PPP loses, you will hear the resounding bad-mouthing of Jagdeo from Freedom House.

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