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Dictatorship always, inevitably devours its own creators
Jan 26, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
When I got the call, it was about ten minutes after I was on the phone chatting with Adam Harris. That was last Sunday. The person on the other end of the line asked me if I saw the letter section of the Chronicle. I immediately said no, that I wasn’t interested.
I have already written that the Chronicle has put me in the history books of this country. No newspaper in the history of the Caribbean has carried over six hundred letters within a four-year span on one particular citizen. The Chronicle has done that on me. Some of these letters are so scurrilous that Christopher Ram called one day and asked me if I wanted to sue. I declined because if I sue on one letter then I would have to take the Chronicle to court every day.
The Chronicle has attacked my family too. I have educated my family in the awareness that this would be the consequences of my activism. I have been married for thirty-two years. My only child is 21 years. My family knows how to handle the dirt thrown on me, both physically and politically.
It so happens that the person wanted to tell me that what the Chronicle letter pages have being doing to me, it has started with Navin Chandarpal. I went on the internet and looked up the Chronicle. Indeed a nasty campaign has been initiated against Mr. Chandarpal. And it was dirty indeed. There was an infinitesimal smile as I read on.
I am experienced enough to know that once dictatorship is encouraged it will devour its own children. It will not stop at Chandarpal. Those in the current PPP hierarchy who echo Chandarpal’s sentiments are going to find themselves victims of the Chronicle’s letter pages. This column is being written on Tuesday and for three consecutive days, the Chronicle has carried two letters for each day derogating Mr. Chandarpal. There will be more to come. This is how dictatorship behaves.
This was bound to happen. How can one have sympathy for those who have now chosen to see the miasma that is seeping in the PPP? Where were these people for nineteen years? What have these people been discussing twice in every month for nineteen years at Freedom House? I am referring to the statutory meetings of the 15-member Executive Committee.
What about the 35 members of the Central Committee? What have they been doing for nineteen years? We must not forget that the PPP has been in power for almost two decades.
It is for this reason that we must be encouraged by the fact that a huge percentage of the electorate will not be swayed by the PPP’s resort to the rhetoric and demagoguery of Burnhamism and PNCism. Young people do not know about the long night of PNC rule.
One particular PPP leader, Clement Rohee, keeps lamenting the bad days of the PNC. No one listens.
So too is Office of the President propagandist, Prem Misir. Unfortunately for them, young people may not even know who Burnham was. Here is an interesting fact to reflect on. Mark Benschop told me that the newer generation knows Dr. Frank Anthony more than the older PPP leaders who are contesting the PPP’s presidential nomination. I disagreed.
We did a little survey together among the newer generation and not one youth we asked knew who Dr. Frank Anthony was. This is despite the fact that he was in charge of Cricket World Cup here, in 2007, then Carifesta. If this demographic category does not know Frank Anthony, then why would they know about the reign of Burnham that ended in 1985?
Back to the 19-year-old domination of the PPP. It is indeed hard to empathize with those PPP stalwarts who have now seen the light when you think of that long period of control. Where were the voices of moderation? At some point, PPP stalwarts inside the Executive Committee and the Central Committee had to invoke the principle of political morality. In the world of realpolitik, some attitudes are logical.
The Central Committee members would support the broad policies of their party in government and the choices for public sector jobs. But what about the horrible aberrations like sexual misconduct, the dirtiness of the Chronicle, the unbelievable kleptocracy?
At no time, did a Central Committee member get up and say; “These things are reflecting terribly on the party’s image, they must stop?” Did anyone in the PPP hierarchy not see the immoral conduct of the Chronicle? I guess now it is too late.
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