Ogunseye and Hinds: Remembering the past

May 06, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Whenever academics, journalists and politicians want to remind us of how instructive the past is they easily point to the most often quoted remark of the Spanish philosopher, George Santayana; “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Seldom do we find other similar expressions.
Here are two that I like. The first is from William Faulkner, American novelist; “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” And the ancient Greek poet, Agathon; “Even a god cannot change the past.”
In Guyana, we are in the midst of the most historic election ever. Come every election, we classify each one as the turning point in our country’s evolution. But this poll will determine whether this country survives in the next few years or whether it takes its place in the category of states like Somalia.
If the PPP wins more than fifty percent of the vote, it will mean its fifth successive victory. It will also mean that the PPP is destined to administer Guyana forever. It is impossible for a government that has performed so badly to win another mandate. If they do, then the PPP is scientifically invulnerable.
The other side of the coin is the disappearance of the opposition. If the opposition cannot beat the PPP this year, they can never ever do it in the future. The PPP is at its most vulnerable since its formation sixty years ago. Interesting to note that at the meeting Messrs. Ramotar and Jagdeo had with their New York supporters, there was no allocation for question time.
This was a huge sign of nervousness and uncertainty. It will be asking too much psychologically of both the PNC and AFC to return to Parliament to be in the losing seats for another five years. Frustration, boredom, but most of all pessimism, will simply burden them to the point of breakdown. What goes through the psyche of a parliamentarian who knows he/she will forever sit on the conquered side?
One of the expectations of the opposition groups in this season is the dream of shared governance after the seats are announced. With the exception of the PPP, all other parties, including the tiny ones, have declared they will pursue a national government.
The thought of a PPP victory without a promise of shared governance has led to both Tacuma Ogunseye and Dr. David Hinds declaring that non-PPP constituencies, particularly African Guyanese, must demand it in demonstrative ways.
Many sections of the Guyanese society reacted with rejectionist attitudes to what these gentlemen have said. We take note of the Private Sector Commission and the PPP. We wonder if these organizations remember that these two gentlemen, Tacuma Ogunseye and Dr. David Hinds, fought for the right of Guyanese to vote in free and fair elections and in the process spent three years respectively in the Camp Street jail; David Hinds almost lost his sight.
Has the society remembered this aspect of its past?
Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, a highly questionable figure in Guyanese politics and a man who would be the first to be investigated by a special judicial commission should the opposition win the next election, wrote about violence in the 1973 elections in both the independent dailies on Wednesday. But the fight for free elections was led by people like Ogunseye and Hinds who sacrificed their freedom so Guyana could have become a free nation.
And who were they fighting? A PNC Government that in countless publications the PPP accused of racism against East Indians in this land. Why was it right for these two freedom fighters to confront an African dominated regime in the seventies and eighties and bring it down but it is treasonable when they call for action against the practice of racism by another regime, this time the PPP, that Ogunseye and Hinds fought alongside?
If anyone in this country has a moral right to condemn racism in government it is people who made tremendous sacrifice in the quest for the elimination of ethnic bias in the use of power. Such people are Ogunseye and Hinds. When they speak we must listen.
Those who don’t want to listen are the people that George Santayana wrote about. There are fools in this country. They can be found in the business community and civil society, but most of all inside the PPP. They treat the past with contempt. They treat persons like Ogunseye and Hinds with ridicule. They are happy to deny the past. But the past never goes away. One day it comes back to devour those too stupid to remember it.

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