Prisoner of an authoritarian mind

Dec 13, 2011 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

After more than sixty years in existence, in power from 1957 to 1964 then in a return to office that is still there since 1992, the most junior of social analysts should have an adequate picture of the nature of the PPP. This writer, not for a fraction of a moment, believed that after 2001, Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo took hold of the PPP and shaped it into his own image and has dominated its every pulse since then. I do not believe that. I do not accept that. There is little evidence to support such a polemic.
Mr. Jagdeo was in love with absolute power alright. But Mr. Jagdeo emerged from the womb of a party that was disturbingly ingrained in and saturated with an authoritarian culture. We must ask the question if it was Mr. Jagdeo who was the only autocratic figure in the PPP. The answer is a reverberating no. Mr. Jagdeo’s colleagues were as tyrannical as him but they didn’t have the power to wield as Jagdeo did.
There is a mountain of evidence readily available to the people of Guyana that prove easily that the PPP leaders from the top to the secondary levels are authoritarian creatures. It is the culture into which they were born. There is no way tomorrow or the next year or the next five years, that the PPP will ever do what the PNC has done earlier this year – let the competitors for the office of leader face the Guyanese people in town hall meetings.
Try to use your imagination as to how PPP leaders conceive of such a concept. They simply do not believe in those kinds of politics.
I will ask readers to remember this column when the PPP decides to elevate one of its cadres if and when the post of General Secretary is left vacant by Donald Ramotar. The General Secretary is the person who is in effect the leader of the PPP.
Messrs. Ramotar, Jagdeo and others probably have decided on that person already. It must have figured in the scheme of things when the party bosses decided on Ramotar. No doubt they would have asked themselves who would lead the party in the event of a Ramotar presidency. There and then, I believe a name was identified. It mattered not that Cheddi Jagan was both President and General Secretary.
The nation will see how democratic the PPP will become after 2011. It will be the same traditional backroom conspiracy. It is left to those optimists to think that a general members’ meeting will be called and after a period of campaign, an open vote will produce a winner. This writer believes that “winner” is already identified. It is for this reason that I am not optimistic about a saccharine evolution in the new Parliament where the three parties will agree to let a billion flowers bloom.
The agenda of the AFC and APNU are in diametrical opposition to the PPP’s. APNU and the AFC, in a short space of time, will want to reverse a tall order of authoritarian directions of the PPP Government that the last Parliament rubberstamped. The PPP minority in the House is not going to democratize Guyana’s political culture or its governance.
We may tell ourselves let’s hope for the best and that the three parties will accommodate each other. But wearing my analyst’s hat I contend that the PPP will find it impossible to reverse some nasty undemocratic Bills that the 2006 Assembly passed. Coming to mind immediately is the Trade Union Recognition Bill.
The PPP is by nature an authoritarian animal and understands no other culture. The PPP lost its parliamentary majority and lost its attempt at a two/thirds standing in the House because it was physically, biologically and psychologically unable to step outside of its authoritarian cocoon during the election campaign.
Just one open apology by President Jagdeo, or candidate Ramotar or a very high-level leader on some failed policy or on corruption could have been vital in the voting.
It could have swayed those who were annoyed. Perhaps this is what happened with the absentee voters in Region Six.
They probably said to themselves that “these people are too arrogant and insensitive; I am going to stay home.” If ever an apology could have won an election, it may have been in 2011 in Guyana.
Weeks before the election, Gail Teixeira was publicly asking for the immediate sacking of some UG lectures. Just days before the voting, Robert Persaud boasted to the public that he knows who the Marriot Hotel investors are but would not say. That is what is called the authoritarian mind.

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Prisoner of an authoritarian mind

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