‘Who says organisa-tion says oligarchy’

Jan 18, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
For reasons that will become obvious as we proceed, I usually would not pay much attention to Mr. Freddie Kissoon, but it is too tempting in light of the heights of absurdity reached when a seasoned commentator charges in to defend another presenter and then proceeds to repeat the error made by the person he is defending (“Horrible defence of life’s indefensible things:” Kaieteur News, 12/01/11).
He wrote: “To say that the PPP Government had its faults but was not an oligarchic regime was to barefacedly deny the objective reality in Guyana. Former PPP Minister, Henry Jeffrey has done just that by an exposition of what constitutes the human being’s obligation to moral values.”
Every secondary school sociology student knows that an oligarchy is an organisation effectively controlled by a small group of its members and that the German sociologist Robert Michels, who coined the term “iron law of oligarchy,” argued that it exists in all organisations: even in modern liberal democracies.
Therefore, as all governmental organisational arrangements are oligarchies, there is nothing particularly alarming about the Government of Guyana being one and thus, absolutely nothing for me to deny.
Like Mr. Maxwell, (“Truth has no political party:” SN: 26/12/10), Mr. Kissoon’s contention is redundant/sterile, for according to Michels: “Who says organisa­tion says oligarchy.”
But it gets worse, for not so long ago (“Anyone cognizant with the workings of oligarchies should not be surprised Corbin has been returned as leader:” SN: 24/08/09) I commented thus:
“It is organisation which gives birth to the domination of the elected over the electors, of the mandataries over the mandators, of the del­egates over the delegators…..” These famous words of Robert Michels, derived from his study of political parties, still hold good today and pervade all our political parties, trade unions, co-operative societies and similar organisations.” Therefore, I challenge Mr. Kissoon to show where and how in any of my writings I have claimed that the government was not an oligarchy.
What Mr. Kissoon is unable to fathom is that while oligarchies have been a long-standing difficulty in all societies, the problem they pose in societies such as Russia and Guyana (if he wishes) is not the fact of their existence, but the permissive context in which they operate.
As such, the policy conclusion would not emphasise the removal of oligarchy (“Who says organisa­tion says oligarchy”) but to reform its permissive context. However, I also suspect that the above is typical of the nonsensical statements peddled by Mr. Kissoon to provide his scribbling with a semblance of scholarship.
Mr. Kissoon then claimed that my “essential adumbration is that one has a loyalty to an organisation therefore one cannot openly criticise it.”
While I am prepared to partly live with this extremely untidy and incomplete presentation of my position, what I actually said was that: “Operational organisations demand a level of loyalty and do not allow their leaders to “wash their dirty linen in public…. Indeed, this kind of organisational requirement has gone beyond moral convenience and is now in the realm of custom and law.
When you join an organisation you are expected to abide by its rules or to leave or face expulsion.”
Of course, this in no way precludes a highly placed member from publicly criticising an organisation on important issues if s/he feels that it is operating in an unacceptable fashion, but in so doing one must be prepared to resign or be expelled.
I would go further and argue that one would only have to resort to public criticism if one were to lose an internal battle and that therefore it would be unethical to go public without resigning, regardless of what you are accusing the organisation of.
I argued that “… insiders have contributed significantly to some of the most fundamental national and international political changes of our time and it is doubtful that they would have ever reached the position to do so had they taken to lambasting their colleagues in public.…Change is brought about by a dialectical interplay of various internal and external forces and is not usually entirely the result of outsider activism.”
This constitutes Mr. Kissoon’s response: “Gorbachev was humiliated in Russian elections after the fall of the USSR. In the case of de Klerk, he quit politics after South Africa was free (of course the facts are that de Klerk not only presided over the release of Nelson Mandela but became deputy president of Mandela’s government of national unity). Hoyte was humiliated in two successive elections.”
The discerning reader may well ask how do future electoral losses, etc, diminish the fact that as insiders these individuals did contribute to regime change.
Winston Churchill played a not insignificant role in the successful British war effort during the Second World War and was immediately thrown out of office in the ensuing elections.
It is only in ethnically divided countries such as Guyana that politicians can feel that longevity in office is some kind of a right.
I said that I am not aware that Deng Xiaoping ever spoke out publicly against the Communist party. Without a scrap of evidence Mr. Kissoon claimed: “Deng Xiaoping did speak out (and here he must mean publicly since that is the bone of contention) against certain policies of the Communist Party of China. He was stripped of his membership, sent to a labour camp and had to wear a dunce cap.”
There is absolutely no evidence that Deng went public against the Communist party and in “Deng Xiaoping: The Politician,” David Shambaugh stated that Deng “….. purge[d] many and was responsible for numerous ruined careers from the 1942 Yan’an rectification to the 14th Party Congress and Eighth National People’s Congress in 1992-93.” (China Quarterly; Sept, 1993). As was the custom with purges (Deng also was purged on three occasions), persons did not lose membership of the Party; Deng was removed “from all leadership positions whilst retaining his party membership” (for broader access: Wikipedia).
Mr. Kissoon then treats us to some of his usual gobbledygook: “To say that when one is part of that system loyalty is an obligation to elevate moral improprieties in a shameless way (sic). If by this he means to convey that we have a duty to be true to ourselves, I agree.
But, as stated above, for me that also means that if I join an organisation and I grow to feel that it is involved in activities that are against my conscience, I must have the courage to leave and then take such action as I believe necessary.
Mr. Kissoon then quite indiscriminately invoked the Nuremberg Trial of Nazi leaders, the resignation of Robin Cook and Clare Short over the war in Iraq, the Lindo Creek massacre, the killing of Waddell, kleptocratic networks, racial discrimination, etc.
However, the Nazi leaders were not found guilty of not publicly speaking out against Hitler (one would have had to hang a significant proportion of the German public if that were so) but for performing illegal acts. Both Cook and Short left the cabinet, which is the proper way to proceed.
Of course, if Mr. Kissoon has hard evidence that Mr. Ralph Ramkarran and others have actively participated in or have even had knowledge of illegalities, he must make it available to the national and/or international authorities, and if not now, while they are in power/office, then sooner or later, the accused will get their comeuppance.
I have no intention of discussing government business in the press but Mr. Kissoon’s stock-in-trade is character assassination, so on the question of my being “pushed” out of the government, let me make this exception and say that whether or not I was “pushed” out depends on the interpretation one wishes to place on what actually took place.
The President and I had differences, which the dispute over the Economic Partnership Agreement highlighted. He said that my continuance in the cabinet was untenable and offered me an ambassadorial position to Suriname.
I made some additions to the normal conditions, was told that they could not be accepted because they would create a precedent and I therefore decided not to take the position. If my information is correct, at the time of my rejection of the ambassadorship, my name had already been submitted to the Surinamese Government.
As such, I have no pathological hatred for the PPP/C. What I have been saying for some time (my writings on this matter have been in the public domain since 2002/03, as I believe Mr. Kissoon knows, for if my memory serves me well, they were subjected to his customary disparagement) is that our main problem is a structural one: ethnic insecurity that results in a political process that allows the incumbent to not take sufficient notice of the electoral process.
As the PPP/C is unwilling to commit to the necessary constitutional changes, it is up to the Guyanese people to elect those who will.
Henry B. Jeffrey

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