Can Dev’s porcupine analysis fit a ‘hot’ Guyana?

Dec 16, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Mr. Ravi Dev writing in Kaieteur News (14th November 2010) titled, “Moving Forward” said, “On a cold winter’s day, a number of porcupines huddled together quite closely in order, through their mutual warmth, to prevent themselves from being frozen.
But they soon felt the effects of their quills on one another, which made them again move apart. Now when the need for warmth once more brought them together, the drawback of the quills was repeated so that they were tossed between the two evils, until they had discovered the proper distance from where they could best tolerate one another.” Arthur Schopenhaur.
It would appear that unlike the porcupines, we humans in Guyana –especially the “Indian” and “African” Guyanese – have still not worked out the “proper distance” from which we may best tolerate each other.”
Now I must admit an initial unfamiliarity with Arthur Schopenhaur who had written about the coexistence of porcupines and their huddling for warmth in the bitter cold winter. Mr. Dev believes that the porcupines with their prickly quills can serve as a lesson for Guyanese.
While I may not wholly disagree with Mr. Dev’s opinion, that the porcupines prickly quills can serve as a lesson for Guyana, I however, understand and appreciate his motives.
May I strongly submit that his analogy nevertheless fell short of his usual high standards and sincere desire for peace, harmony and mutual ethnic security in ‘hot’ Guyana.
Mr. Dev would like to remind us that porcupines with their sharp quills, despite their obvious empathy and necessity to band together are also affected by those very qualities which they possess. The quills of these porcupines are in effect protection which maintains their safe distance; in effect it keeps them away from deliberately harming each other.
We find on the international political scene a similarity with the superpower porcupines, USA and the Soviet Union (now Russia).
They kept each other at bay by their policy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) in their ratcheting up of the arms race until they came to their senses. In other words the matching military presence of strategic weapons, intercontinental ballistic missiles, (ICBMs) tanks, troops and stealth bombers by the USA and Soviet Union are quills that kept the two superpowers at bay. In effect both sides did not destroy each other.
The two international porcupines, in effect avoided wars directly even though they fought by proxies in Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan. It was in their best interest to avoid each other by maintaining their distance to keep peace and global security. By the presence of their “quills.” the USA and Soviet Union avoided any engagement directly.
However, in the case of Guyana political scene, Mr. Ravi Dev’s analysis does not accurately reflect the reality of Guyana’s political landscape. It is no secret that only one ethnic (blacks) has preponderant evidence in both Guyana’s armed forces inclusive of the police force. Everyone knows that military makeup is a decisive factor in politics in a country such as Guyana.
Guyana’s progress depends on the two major groups having a military balance of power with mutual respect and prevailing distance as with the porcupines during the cold winter time. The fact that the support base of the PNC is also strategically ensconced in the civil service can serve to stymie the PPP/Civic Government policies when their ethnic loyalties are challenged. Where, when and how does the necessity of a new dawn begins in Guyana’s hot political climate with its fragile ethnic balance?
Remember Mr. Forbes Burnham’s famous boast when he sought to deal condignly with Dr Walter Rodney that his “steel was sharper?” Well the man was right. Dr Rodney was brutally assassinated despite Dr Rodney’s colour. There was no restraint even against “kit and kin”.
The PNC possesses far greater sharper prickly “quills” (more so than the porcupines’) and therefore they have the power to choose and define distances. Neither Amerindians nor Indians with their desirable women, cassareep or dhall and rice can serve as the balancing force in any Guyana ethnic conflict. There is no ‘quill pro quo’ I respectfully
suggest.
Mr. Forbes Burnham’s PNC after independence was able to outwit the PPP by his buildup of his supporters in Guyana’s military forces especially the GDF and National Service. In fact immediately after Guyana’sindependence in 1966, Sir Shridath Ramphal the PNC Attorney General brandished an international Commission of Jurist (ICJ) report which recommended that Guyana’s armed forces be ethnically and racially balanced. Like former British Prime Minister Clement Atlee who signed a document with Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler as a deterrent to avoid World War 11, the PNC initiated ICJ report was not worth the paper it was written on. Absolutely nothing came of the ICJ report.
Luckily the British replaced Atlee with Winston Churchill who proceeded to defeat Hitler. The post independent PNC military buildup proceeded smoothly with the PNC disbanding the British Guiana Volunteer Force and pouring its overwhelming black membership into the Special Services Unit (SSU), which was pioneered by the 1960s PPP initiative.
That SSU was the first Guyanese armed force which was racially and ethnically balanced. The SSU’s balanced ethnic composition has been completely transformed to the present day GDF. Even the SSU’s commander, Sandhurst (British) trained Guyanese Major Abdul Sattaur was summarily dismissed; a professional was not given a chance to head Guyana’s new army after independence.
Those who seek a balance of power with mutual respect and prevailing distance as with the porcupines regardless of the weather would find the races coexisting a lot more satisfactorily when neither side feels insecure. We must learn to live with each other despite our differences.
Vassan Ramracha Ramrachee

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