Political Omniscience and Hubris

Sep 19, 2010 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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I thought long and hard before I decided to respond to Mr Ogunseye’s letter “Dev is conveniently engaging in outright lies and sensationalism” (KN 9-12-10). He’d objected to my statement in “political Hypocrisy): “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 demand that the PPP accept a minority position in a unified PCD slate…”
Most Guyanese are pretty fed up with regurgitations of the past – especially from political types like Mr Ogunseye and myself who tend to be rather long winded. They’d like us to deal with the present as they yearn for a brighter future. But I’ve decided to respond for two reasons. Firstly, the present does not drop on us full-blown from the sky. It is a consummation of events that we all (including our forbears) participated in – and which live on in our minds and collective memories. As Faulkner reminded us, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” There is, then, a history of the present that may reveal why we are stuck in a political, social and cultural morass and suggest new strategies to achieve our horizon of expectations.
The second reason, related to the first, is that while an individual or group may be most sincere about their beliefs (about politics or any other social situation), they should at all times have in the back of their minds that they possibly could be mistaken. Especially if the beliefs have already been proven mistaken in the past, there are the consequences for the ordinary people.
I would not question the sincerity of Messrs Kwayana, Ogunseye and Hinds: I do not believe they lie. It is ironic that the passage Mr Ogunseye disputes follows my lament that Dr Hinds, in rejecting the strategy of the Buxton Committee based on his beliefs, was ignoring two historical instances of sincere beliefs leading to negative outcomes – Mr Kwayana’s intervention in Buxton in the ’60s and the WPA’s miscalculation of its “multi-racial” support in the late ’80s and early ’90s
Mr Ogunseye claims that the WPA never asserted that they had the support of the majority of voters nor demanded that the PPP accept a minority position in a unified PCD slate. I will not elaborate on my intense interactions with top members of the WPA executive between 1989-1991, including a specially convened meeting to discuss the very question of “multi-racial support”. My assessments might be considered subjective or worse, “lies”.
In an SN interview of 9-15-91, WPA’s presidential candidate Dr Clive Thomas declared, “I really do feel that the WPA will do exceptionally well in this election…even me who is considered the most pessimistic of the leadership in the party about our prospects.” So well, in fact, because of “multi-racial support”. He revealed that WPA had been approached by GUARD, which had attracted huge (and what I thought were “multi-racial”) crowds, but had held off any closer relationship so as not to alienate its constituency. “It (GUARD) is still seen as largely of a certain type, important Indo-Guyanese or white collar Guyanese.” A party would have to be very confident of winning to turn down support of such a popular group.
In an December 1991 article, after Dr Ramharack’s TRPI poll suggested that at best the WPA would secure 4% of the votes, Mr Frederick Kissoon, who had been a WPA representative on the Council of Guidance (generally consisting of top party executives) vehemently rejected the numbers. Speculating on the influence of race (declining), the youth factor (increasing), new Indian leaders, crowd attendance etc. he declared conclusively: “I would put the PNC a considerable distance behind the WPA…Frankly I believe it (PNC support) to be around 10-12%.”
In Mr Kissoon’s column of 4-25-08 he was even more candid, “In my heart I knew the WPA would have either won the contest or finished strongly.” Mr Kissoon’s sentiment reflected what I had gathered directly from WPA executives. More pertinently, two weeks before the elections, on 9-23-92, in a release “To All Candidates And WPA Members”, the WPA declared, “We are smelling victory, we now have to ensure that we keep it that way.”
I want to emphasise the point I am making is that the WPA’s misreading of the ethnic/racial orientation 20 years ago led them to make demands in the PCD that were unrealistic and led to the breakup of a possible wider alliance. My admonitions over the last few years are prompted by actions that I felt were detrimental to the possibility of such a needed alliance in the present. Recently, I saw Mr Ogunseye on TV concede that in the period under review, the WPA underestimated the question of race. I also saw Dr Hinds invoke Dr Rodney’s 1970 formulation for separate groundings in the ethnic communities, even as there is coordination at other levels. This had been our approach since 1988 but which as late as 1998 when we invoked Rodney’s imprimatur, Mr Kwayana rejected.
On WPA’s proposing that the PPP accept a “minority position in the PCD”, again eschewing personal conversations with the principals, I have gone by the only published reports I could find – that of the historian Dr Odeen Ishmael and Dr Cheddi Jagan – both of course, from the PPP. Both however, with access to the official records, as confirmed by Mr Ogunseye.
Even though in the public domain, since 1997, I have not heard any WPA official deny that they proposed on a joint list 50% should go to Civic Groups and 50% to the four (remaining) parties in the PCD – meaning that the WPA would have the same 12% as the PPP. Or that they rejected the PPP’s last proposal of a 40% PPP: 30%WPA: 20% DLM :10% combined list.
As an individual who believes democracy will only be sustained when incumbents perceive that they can be voted out of office, I am cautioning that the opposition heed the lessons of history to garner the widest possible support and alliance for a future National Government. I have invoked before the admonition of the Jamaican scholar, Dr David Scott: “histories of the past ought to be interventions in the present, strategic interrogations of the present’s norms as a way of helping us to glimpse the possibilities for an alternative future.”

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