Carl Greenidge and Nietzsche’s Übermensch

Mar 25, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

One of the “certainties” of politics is that people will embrace activists and politicians who have considerable experience and will logically vote them into office. This may be one of the enduring features of politics, but it is not necessarily a predictable trend. There comes a time when a country feels so burdened by failures that it looks for Nietzsche’s Übermensch.
The examples are many. This may be a late 20th century development, particularly from the seventies onwards.
What happens is that as society goes through long periods of social and economic turmoil, it begins to question the leadership and ability of its politicians who have been around for a long time. The thinking, though unfairly, is that these people have exhausted their options, and it is time to facilitate newer people whose minds have not been burdened by the long years of crises.
In many ways, Barack Obama was a beneficiary of this kind of sociological process. Americans were wary of their traditional politicians in light of the two wars America was fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama, to the young Americans, was a new man with new ideas who ought to be given a chance. They gave him a chance. The rest is now history.
It would be true to say that this kind of psychological transformation is particularly manifest in developed western societies, but there have been a few situations in the Third World. In the case of Guyana, Mr. Greenidge’s loss by a mere fifteen votes in the campaign to win the PNC’s presidential slot, tells a large story of the psychology of politics.
It holds immense lessons for politics in Guyana. The incredible showing of Carl Greenidge should guide the opposition as they struggle to find a consensus candidate.
Mr. Greenidge is someone hardly known in political circles here. He vanished from the political landscape almost twenty years ago when the PNC was defeated at the 1992 elections.
It is doubtful that even one percent of youthful PNC members heard about him before 2011. The nature of international public service occupation precluded him from involvement in local politics. In the contest against his competitors, Mr. Greenidge came up against a longstanding servant of the PNC and a dynamic woman activist, Dr. Faith Harding. He collected far more votes than her. In a country crying out for young leaders, Mr. Greenidge literally demolished James Bond. And of course, he should have run a pale second to Mr. Granger. In comparing the two, Mr. Granger had millions of miles of distance in front of Mr. Greenidge. Granger is a national figure, having excelled in military service and intellectual endeavours. Many persons feel that Mr. Granger’s victory was made possible by the perception that he was the favoured candidate of the PNC’s establishment.
In the end, Mr. Greenidge lost by 15 votes. Remarkable and phenomenal may be mild words to describe his showing for an unknown Guyanese. Three ballots counted for him had to be subtracted because they were spoilt. Had those persons learnt the simple art of putting a tick against a name, the margin would have been 12.
The political implications of Greenidge’s showing are complex and enormous. Why did PNC delegates overlook Harding and Granger and ballot so handsomely for someone who did not have a pronounced presence in their country?
Mr. Greenidge’s long absence from the tit-for-tat, fractious debates, continuous fighting and miserable political and economic failures that have characterised life in Guyana these past 15 years have helped his profile tremendously. PNC delegates saw him as someone outside of the mess who should be given a chance.
Simply put; they wanted a fresh face, a person without any involvement with the chaos that they have to live with. Put another way, they were wary of those that have been around them for so long but who have not shown that they can change Guyana for the better.
Obviously this doesn’t mean they are right. Surely, you can’t blame Mr. Granger for not checking the excesses of the PPP and Mr. Jagdeo. But what is involved here is the psychology of politics. Mr. Greenidge’s extraordinary performance should tell the opposition parties (all of them) that the electorate may be getting tired of those who have experience, but lack a record of success.
In the deliberations to come on the consensus candidate, the strategic move should be in the direction of looking at someone who, though he/she may be untried, may have what the electorate wants – newness and freshness.

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