The PPP is no good for Guyana today just as it was in the 50’s and 60s

Nov 14, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
While the caption of Mr. Hydar Ally’s letter, “There is no perfect individual and, by extension, party or organisation,” (Kaieteur News, November 8), is true, the actual body of his letter is so crippled in its reasoning that it reminded me of the saying: “Better to shut up and let people think you are stupid, than speak up and confirm people’s thinking of you.”
Judging from his writings, Mr. Ally is not necessarily a stupid person, but robotic politics can sometimes make you seem that way. Now, contrary to his denial of being a conformist, his praise of democratic centralism as being essential to party discipline proves he is definitely a political conformist who is also being rewarded as a paid PPP apologist.
Wikipedia says, “Democratic centralism is the name given to the principles of internal organisation used by Lenninst political parties, and the term is sometimes used as a synonym for any Leninist policy inside a political party. The democratic aspect of this organisational method describes the freedom of members of the political party to discuss and debate matters of policy and direction, but once the decision of the party is made by majority vote all members are expected to uphold that decision. This latter aspect represents the centralism. As Lenin described it, democratic centralism consisted of freedom of discussion, unity of action”.
Nothing is inherently wrong with the basic concept of democratic centralism, as Wikipedia defined it above, because many business and social organisations with boards and executive or management committees, do subscribe to this concept.
However, when it is extrapolated into the political arena, it is often expanded to mean absolute political control and it is used to demand silence/compliance from members even in the face of wrong doing by a party or a government.
The communist-oriented PPP requires its members to always be conformists (political sheep).
What I also found rather profound in its contextual application to the topic at hand was Mr. Ally’s advert to a Vladimir I. Lenin precept: “He is not wise who makes no mistakes. There are no such men, nor will there ever be. He is wise who makes not very serious mistakes and corrects them easily and quickly.”
The construction of the first sentence sounds almost proverbial and it may have had something to do with the fact that Lenin was born of Jewish ancestry (on his maternal grandfather’s side, and he even married a Jew) and likely read Solomon’s Book of Proverbs (his proclamations were said to often be in Yiddish), but in actuality, it conveys the impression that the prerequisite for wisdom is to make mistakes, whereas I think the prerequisite for avoiding mistakes is wisdom.
Maybe what Lenin meant was that a wise person learns from his mistakes, but then again, the politics of the statement may have been prophetic to excuse the foolishness that would emerge over the years from communist leaders who excused their dictatorial mistakes as the products of wisdom.
While the last sentence of the Lenin quote is acceptable, what we are witnessing in the corrupt Guyana Government are not mistakes, but deliberate violation of laws, rules and standards, and with no signs of efforts to correct them easily and quickly.
Obviously, therefore, the leaders of government in Guyana either lack wisdom or are plain playing the fools.
By the way, another communist, Mao Zedong said, “So long as a person who has made mistakes… honestly and sincerely wishes to be cured and to mend his ways, we should welcome him and cure his sickness so that he can become a good comrade.”
This means the person who made the mistakes must be willing to correct his error, but do the PPP and government leaders appear willing to correct anything? No PPP or government official seems able and or willing to address or correct the endemic corruption and other abuses in the Jagdeo government.
Rather than try to expose or even correct the wrongs and wind up bringing down the government (throwing out the baby while throwing out the bath water), the conformist nature demands they all preserve the party’s hold on power by biting their tongue. It is called party paramountcy, you dimwitted comrades.
So party paramountcy, which was once ascribed to the PNC under Forbes Burnham, has been revived under Bharrat Jagdeo and Donald Ramotar, and it confirms there is no significant difference between the PPP and the PNC.
That’s also why I don’t pay any attention to anyone, whether in or out of the PPP, who keeps dredging up the PNC’s past to excuse the PPP’s present and to keep Guyanese divided along ethnic lines for political support and votes.
Yes, the PNC rigged elections, but you have to put an ‘f’ before rigged to get an idea of what the PPP regime has done to the country’s finances and laws since 1999. This PPP is no good for Guyana today just as it was no good for Guyana back in the 50’s and 60s.
And it has nothing to do with race as much as it has everything to do with every Guyanese raison d’être.
Emile Mervin

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