“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way.”

Aug 18, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I am not a religious person but I know there is a popular Christian hymn with the above title. If that hymn applies to any human being or institution or process in this country, it is to the men and women who formed the PPP over sixty years ago and to those who presently control and dominate the Government of Guyana.
PPP’s General Secretary, Donald Ramotar a few days ago, told the media that the PPP will only form power-sharing relationships with partners it can trust. The statement not only incites citizens to laugh at both Mr. Ramotar and the PPP but it symbolizes all that is intellectually and politically bankrupt with the PPP.
The seminal question is what the PPP means by trust. The hymn becomes relevant. Trust in the eyes of all PPP dictators from Cheddi and Mrs. Jagans right down to the present mandarins at Freedom House and the Office of the President means to obey. Now in the hymn, trust and obey are separate concepts. In the world of Cheddi and Mrs. Jagan (especially the latter), trust and obey are one, overlapping concept. It means that if you obey us, then we will trust you, then we can have a relationship.
This has been the politics, the deadly game Mrs. Jagan played out in her entire life. For a fuller discussion of trust and obey inside the head of Mrs. Jagan, see the analysis of Mrs. Jagan by that Caribbean icon, the late Lloyd Best in Frank Birbalsingh, “The PPP of Guyana, 1950-1992: An Oral History.”
It is shockingly surprising to hear Mr. Ramotar talk about the need for the PPP to have a trustful partner before the sharing of power with other associations can take place. The PPP has been shaped by the paranoia of Cheddi and Janet Jagan, and to this day it remains a group of human beings deeply and physiologically suspicious of any other human being that is not infatuated with the founding leaders of the PPP, its ideology and its culture.
The essential reason for the total failure of the PPP to move Guyana into the future, even though it would have had almost two decades to do so when election time comes around in 2010, is because of the mistrust, insecurity and paranoia that have taken up residence inside the psychology of PPP leaders. The tragic consequences of that is groupthink. Most educated Guyanese knew about these melancholy traits of the PPP and it was no surprise that Jagan himself was turned down by several prominent Guyanese and Caribbean intellectuals for the post of Ministry of Trade and Development after he became President in 1992. These people were not prepared to work with the PPP because they knew their independence would have been compromised. In the end, Jagan had to settle for one of his servile protégés.
The story of obey us and we will trust you with a little bit of power is best highlighted in the masquerade that was known as the Civic Component. By now, political observers would have digested what Henry Jeffrey wrote a few months back. He explained that there wasn’t a thing, an entity, an organism named the Civic Component. Jeffrey said it was a living fiction. He went further and revealed that there was the distinct feeling on the part of the individuals who masqueraded as the Civic Component that PPP leaders, including Dr. Jagan, would have shown serious vexation if those individuals had brought into existence an organization named the Civic Component. I remember the night Dr. Hughley Hanoman, a big name in the Civic Component, sat next to me at the wake of my uncle, Dr. Leslie Mootoo. Hanoman was on his way out, pushed out as he told me. He certainly didn’t obey and therefore wasn’t given the trust he wanted. Is Sam Hinds trusted? Does he obey?
Perhaps the most tragic moment in the role of distrust or mistrust in the history of the PPP was the ostracization of the WPA by Cheddi Jagan himself after he won the 1992 elections. Jagan was never going to trust the WPA.
They were intellectual and political heavyweights, people that Jagan was never comfortable with throughout his long, fighting career. This morbidity has found a place deep in the psyche of all his protégés that now inherit the power he got in 1992. Trust is a word not one single PPP leader understands. Obey is their favourite password. Once you enter the Kingdom of Robb Street, you must obey. There’s no other way.

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“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way.”

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