Support for a broad national coalition

Mar 18, 2011 Letters

---

Dear Editor,
Unlike Mr. Vassan Ramracha (“Will Blacks continue supporting AFC under Ramjattan?” Kaieteur News, 09/03/11), if I had any influence upon how Afro-Guyanese (or indeed anyone) will vote at the next general elections, I would use it against the AFC and towards support for a broad national coalition.
This is largely because Mr. Ramracha, I find the AFC neither “unique” nor transformative. While I concur with your position that we need “urgent solutions” to the problems of race and racism if we are to “live in peace and harmony, you bring to this laudable aim a turn of mind that could only jeopardize it.
With regard to my position that Indian support for the PPP/C constitutes “…. a stable ethnic majority, which …. Short-circuits the democratic process,” he claimed that “…. equal acknowledgement is not made that the PNC also follows an appeal to race, does the same thing but they are nevertheless innocent and not culpable.”
This is an untrue statement. Indeed, outside of some self-serving politicians, I find it difficult to identify anyone writing about race and ethnicity in Guyana over the last few decades who has not accepted that the major political parties mobilise around racial issues.
Yet, on the basis of this unfounded claim he proceeded to accuse some in the African community and myself of holding a position that “… the Indian presence is untenable in Guyana and that they are undemocratic by behaviour…That their religion and culture must be changed to confirm to other than what it is.” Nowhere in all my written contributions could Mr. Ramracha find any such construction.
Indeed, outside of his imaginary extrapolations, he will find it difficult to locate that kind of contention in any but the barest minority of Afro-Guyanese contributors. Why then, we may ask, does he come to these rather unhelpful conclusions?
A few weeks ago I wrote: “The fact is that many of us, whether in government or not, exhibit dictatorial tendencies. In my view the fault is not mainly with the person, but with the institutional checks and balances that our bi-communal society make difficult to institutionalize. Put many of us in Mr. Jagdeo’s position (in which the PPP/C appears virtually certain win every election) and I suspect that our behaviour would leave as much, if not more, to be desired! …. In my view, removing Mr. Jagdeo without radically changing the system will provide no certainty of a different outcome. However, those who want to place their faith in the so-called ‘good man’ may do so!” (“Allegations cannot become truth:” Kaieteur News, 26/01/11)
In other words, it is my contention that it is foolhardy to blame individuals and groups without first addressing the inadequacies of the institutional relations within which the fallible human person is located. For me, Indians and Africans vote where they believe their interests lie, which in the case of Guyana is in the direction in which they feel most secure.
Both the bi-communal nature of our society and the established pattern of voting over the decades indicate that we should seek a radical reform of our governance mechanisms.
However, Mr. Ramracha does not see the world as I do: he is one of those who understand our problem it terms of ethnic blame and exclusive solutions. Thus his apparent preference for partition and federalism “which allows each racial group to govern itself independently, while still living together as one giant federated family.”   Furthermore, since, in his way of thinking, Afro-Guyanese were largely responsible for the existence of the Burnham regime, Indians must now take responsibility for what is taking place today and thus he imputes his mindset to me and has me contending “…. that
the Indian presence is untenable in Guyana.” Indeed, he is again poised to blame Africans if they should: “…. flip flop and ease their way back into the PNC now that that party has installed priority in a man of war as its Presidential standard bearer?” Yet, he lauds Indian support for the PPP/C, for according to him, “They have not short-circuited the democratic process …. they have enhanced it!”
The tendency to view the world in this rudimentary fashion is clearly visible in his other stated concerns. For example, to my claim that Forbes Burnham was a dictator because he was able to continuously manipulate elections to keep himself in power, Mr. Ramracha asked: “So where did Mr. Burnham’s proclivity for dictatorship/authoritarianism originate?” The answer is simple, for as my comment above indicated, in my view it was not Burnham’s proclivity but the permissive nature of his environment that constituted the major problem. We all appreciate good and honest people, but I would not sleep well at night if, based simply on the assumption of honesty, someone had in their safe-keeping the little I have in the bank!
In passing, Mr. Ramracha wrote: “For sure Indian voting pattern has not always been exclusively PPP as the evidence has shown in their affiliation with the Portuguese-led UF and the African led Rodney WPA.” When one speaks of Indian or African support for the PPP or the PNC, one is not claiming that these groups support either party “exclusively” but only that a vast majority of votes are cast in an ethnic fashion.
Also, I would not confuse support for someone who was standing up to an autocrat of his own race with political support at the ballot box. The WPA received only a minute percent of the votes at the 1992 general elections.
Mr. Ramracha speaks emotionally in support of the Indian community but it is his unsubstantiated and inflammatory contentions and invocation of men of war that is more likely to become self-fulfilling, exacerbate racial tension and lead to the dire outcomes he proffers.
Such results would endanger not only Indians but all of us, and I venture to say that as a supporter of the AFC, the kind of mind that he brings to our national problem is likely to do that party more harm than good.
Henry B. Jeffrey

---

---