The PPP Government’s balance sheet of democracy and freedom

Sep 22, 2010 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The story of the PPP’s approach to democracy is a long and complicated one. It would take a book length manuscript to trace the PPP’s essential attitude to the process of democracy and an examination of its achievements in Government since 1992 in the areas of democracy and the deepening of freedom. However labyrinthine is that story it began with Dr. Cheddi Jagan and Mrs. Janet Jagan.
All my readers would be familiar with my theory on why the PPP Government failed to bring greater freedoms to this sad land after it took power in 1992 and why aspects of the exercise of power have reached levels of degeneracy that I honestly feel would not have happened under the PNC’s reign. My theory is that the communist character of Dr. and Mrs. Jagan has become part of the psyche of the generation of leaders that it nurtured. I am not referring to whether these leaders are communist or not.
I am talking about the communist conceptualization of how power should be administered. One theoretical formulation needs to be advanced before we move on. I accept the argument of Hannah Arendt that communism and fascism have overlapping beliefs in how both ideologies conceive of human nature and power. My inflexible contestation is that whoever you bring from Freedom House to become the president, there will naturally be difference in form but the substance authoritarianism will be there. It is the undying motif of the Jagans.
I admit at the same time that if the protégés of Mr. Burnham return to power, Mr. Burnham’s guide as to exercise power will be sacredly followed. Guyana is best off without the PPP and the PNC and if that cannot happen, there should be a government of national unity.
Let’s return to our topic. Literally dozens of people over the past three decades have said to me; “Burnham may have gone astray, but you people do not know the PPP; they are not democrats and will never practice democracy.” Those names include many persons who served the PNC yet admit that the Jagans were never people who had respect for the traditional connotations of democracy and were in no way morally superior to the PNC in the sixties.
Today, the tragedy of Guyana lies bare for all to see. We have moved far away from the democratic tradition of the region to which we belong. Guyana hasn’t got an Ombudsman. There should be the vivid reminder that under Mr. Burnham’s Government the Ombudsman investigated two ministers for corruption and found one guilty.
This “dictator,” this “monster,” that the PPP calls Burnham when he was in power had a functioning Ombudsman. The state of local government under the PPP is pathetic. The PPP’s conceptualization of how local authority must function goes back to the party’s ideological foundation as adumbrated by Dr. and Mrs. Jagan. The state is coterminous with the entire society and municipal government must be a subordinate organ.
Come 2011, the PPP would be 19 years in power and not for one moment did we ever come close to having the release of radio station licences. We are a caricature in the world. There is only one station that is allowed to broadcast and it is state-owned. Many of the sacred principles that underpin natural law are ignored by the PPP leaders. This Government has done away with the Pubic Service Appellate Tribunal. The Commonwealth consultant on parliamentary systems came to Guyana and advised on an independent Parliament that is not subservient to the Executive. His recommendation is that this unacceptable state of affairs should come to an end. It still lives on.
Another consultant came and definitively pronounced on the importance of the Freedom of Information Act. He said it nourishes freedom. We are the only Caricom nation where leaders of a political party, in this case the PPP, sit as Permanent Secretaries.
How can the traditional neutral civil service be impartial when it has four administrative heads who are politicians?
We must be the only country where a Vice-Chancellor of the country’s only university while sitting in that capacity was a candidate in a general election.
Are these things the creation of Mr. Jagdeo? The answer is no. It goes back to Dr. Jagan who once argued when he was Premier that the civil service must serve the interest of the government. Here Jagan was subtly making a distinction between government and country. The PPP will never let its members decide on its presidential candidate. It just does not believe in such types of freedoms.

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The PPP Government’s balance sheet of democracy and freedom

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