Political Hypocrisy

Sep 05, 2010 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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Dr. David Hinds offered a further clarification on his impassioned opposition to President Jagdeo’s acceptance of the invitation to visit Buxton. His clarification does not address the concern I expressed in my column of the same day (“Crab Dance” – extolling “agitation” rather than “accommodation”) and in fact, raises further disturbing questions about our political system.
Grounding his addendum in “defence of African dignity and honour”, Hinds opined that the issues are about “racial pride”, “racial imagery”, “racial surrender and racial conquering”. More specifically there was, “The image of (Jagdeo) entering the village with pomp and ceremony while the powerless villagers cheer, bow down and hail him … not an uplifting image for African Guyanese.” In Hinds’ estimation, “those who know the plight of the downtrodden should not take advantage of it…there is something insensitive and immoral to use your authority to take advantage of the vulnerability of your opposite ethnic group for political purposes”
The predicament, I suggest, is an ineluctable consequence of our political parties insisting that they are “multiracial” when just as inevitably – notwithstanding their expressed intentions – they end up with supporters of one or another racial/ethnic group. There is no doubt in my mind that Jagan and Burnham, after the (in)famous split, intended their parties to be “multiracial” – based on their criteria of having individuals from the various races in their executives. That their supporters split along ethnic lines has as much to do with the need of the up-to-then suppressed native groups to assert their self-worth, as with the mobilisation strategies of the leaders. The identity of the leader symbolised group self-worth. Our people have still not been weaned from that need: hence the continued salience of the politics of identity.
It was for this reason that we broke with the WPA leadership in 1991, when they insisted that they had overcome “racial” voting, had the support of the majority of voters and demanded that the PPP accept a minority position in a unified PCD slate. We need not detain ourselves over “what might have been”, save to warn against the hubris of political leaders. It is for this reason that we have doubts that the AFC will make any great inroads into the Indian vote.
Notwithstanding the (symptomatically grudging) acceptance of Mr. Khemraj Ramjattan as the Presidential candidate (?), AFC is widely perceived as a “red people” party (as in “League of Coloured People” that had been absorbed by Burnham’s PNC) led by Mr Raphael Trotman. It is not, let us emphasise, that we doubt the sincerity of the leaders to be “multiracial”, but simply we cannot doubt the greater sincerity of the people to concede that they still see their interests (especially security interests) through ethnic lenses.
To overcome this dilemma, ROAR had pointed out that if we concede that ultimately what is required is a multi-racial government then there should be no shame in conceding that a party may be “ethnic”. The parties, of course, would be compelled to declare that they will coalesce with other ethnic parties to form the requisite “multiracial” government. That no party (other than ROAR) has been willing to take this step makes it hard not to accept the cynical argument that they are more interested in securing power rather than legitimacy and stability. ROAR was denounced as being “racist” with no party willing to point out that it was calling for a government of National Unity -at least for a while; until the people saw that opposition politicians didn’t necessarily have horns.
So we have the situation where the PPP (which has as much claim as the PNC, WPA, or AFC to be called “multiracial, by their common criteria) being denounced for ignoring the sensibilities of Africans in accepting an invitation to visit an African village. We have no doubt that such sensibilities exist: I well remember the bitterness at Hoyte entering some Indian villages even after he had brought back Booker Tate and raised cane-cutters’ wages. Hinds himself conceded that the government had already committed to the spending on Buxton as part of its national plan, before being invited by the 170th Committee.
But can the PPP (or a future government of any of the present parties, including the WPA) overcome such sensibilities as presently constituted? Ought, after all, implies can. Not until they all first accept their ethnic basis and secondly are prepared to be part of a Government of National Unity. If we accept the present fig-leaf of being “multiracial” then it is, at best, naïve if we ask politicians not to court votes across the divide and at worse, hypocritical.
And we return to Dr Hinds’s dogmatic assertion that he knows what lies in the minds of Jagdeo and the Committee to deploy words like “Indian boss” and “Father giver” and “charade” (Jagdeo) and “betrayers”, “grovelling”, “mercenaries and beggars” (Committee). By committing the logical fallacy of the “excluded middle” – to assert that there are no other categorizations – he demanded that Buxtonians and by extension all African Guyanese be “agitative” rather than “accomodative”.
Dr Hinds is repeating the admitted historical error of Elder Kwayana, the eminence grise of Buxton. During the riots of the 1960’s, the latter declared that he adopted the role of organising the “defence” of Buxton against what he concluded then to be the hostile surrounding Indian communities of Annandale and Lusignan. By the time he accepted that he had been wrong, Buxton had cleansed itself of all its Indian inhabitants and had earned a reputation it still hasn’t shaken off. Buxton has not been led astray only by “outside political sophisticates”.
I offer to Dr Hinds, the advice of former Harvard academic Michael Ignatieff that I once proffered to Elder Kwayana in a discussion on “elected dictatorships”: “In academic life, false ideas are merely false and useless ones can be fun to play with. In political life, false ideas can ruin the lives of millions and useless ones can waste precious resources. An intellectual’s responsibility for his ideas is to follow their consequences wherever they may lead. A politician’s responsibility is to master those consequences and prevent them from doing harm.”
I do not have to remind you, Dr Hinds, that your interventions in Guyana are political.

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