Guyana is no more a democracy today than it was when the PPP took power in 1992

May 27, 2012 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I am not given to using any newspaper’s valuable space to engage in debates with persons whose made-up minds have no use for the enlightening and position-altering effects of objective facts. But I ask your indulgence to respond to Vishnu Bisram’s letter (KN May 25th), which was a response to my letter published by KN on May 19th.
In that May 19th letter, I argued that the PPP has made no functioning improvement to the democratic framework it inherited from the PNC and challenged Mr. Bisram to present specific evidence to support his fictitious claim that the PPP restored democracy to Guyana in 1992. I also challenged him to provide proof that the PPP’s commitment to universal suffrage extended beyond the suffrage’s obvious racial usefulness in Guyana. Instead of presenting the requested evidence, he responded by rebuking me for comments I did not implicitly or explicitly make and offered unsubstantiated assertions that reveal how discombobulated one can become when attempting to defend a fiction.
Mr. Bisram chided me for disputing the contribution of my Indian compatriots to the struggle for universal suffrage and for arguing that it was acceptable for Guyanese to be denied the right to vote. My letter addressed neither of these issues. Mr. Bisram was apparently offended by my rightly pointing out the hypocrisy of the PPP calling for voting rights in Guyana even as it heartlessly supported communist regimes that denied the same rights to their own citizens. Only the vacuous, the willfully ignorant or a PPP supporter would miss the point and equate my observation of PPP hypocrisy with a call for Guyanese to be denied their voting rights.
In response to my call to provide proof that the PPP has added anything new to the democratic institutions it found when it came to power in 1992, Mr. Bisram claimed that “….democracy has been institutionalized.” He then offers as evidence the easily discredited assertions that: “People   speak and write freely without concerns of being victimized. Their new found freedom allows them to make all kinds of claims that cannot be substantiated with evidence. Elections are free and fair.”  Well, Kaieteur News, CN Sharma, Stabroek News, Freddie Kissoon, and people within the PPP itself would not mind speaking or writing with the fictional freedom from possible victimization that Mr. Bisram has conjured up in his mind. And every Guyanese knows that Guyanese have always been able to make “all kinds of claims that cannot be substantiated with evidence.”   We can go to the archives and pull copies of the Mirror and Thunder in which we will find the type of claims that Mr. Bisram wants us to believe can only be made now that the PPP is in power.  Also, everyone knows that the PPP came to power under free and fair elections arranged under the PNC, so free and fair elections is not something that started under the PPP.
It is completely disingenuous to argue that the PPP has “institutionalized” democracy when the PPP has not added a single institution to the framework the PNC left in place. In fact, it can be credibly argued that our so-called democracy is slowly and frighteningly being de-institutionalized. The PPP has abandoned the constitutionally-mandated Office of the Ombudsman, has only agreed under pressure from the opposition-controlled 10th Parliament to establish the constitutionally-mandated Public Procurement Commission, and former president Bharrat Jagdeo refused to assent to bills within the constitutionally-mandated timeframe. Mr. Jagdeo also for years used all kinds of subterfuge to ignore the court’s order to allow Guyanese their constitutional right to establish private radio stations so that they could access information from sources of their choosing. The plain truth is that, from an institutional or civil rights perspective, Guyana is no more a democracy today than it was when the PPP took power in 1992.
I will not dispute Mr. Bisram’s claim that he has never been a member or supporter of the PPP. However, I do share the widely-held view that he has been an enabler of the PPP’s disregard for transparency and accountability in governance. And his enabling attitude is clearly on display in his letter.
He refers to the PPP’s disgusting corruption and total disregard for transparency and accountability as merely “many mistakes” and “gross blunders”. And rather than acknowledge the widely-circulated view that the PPP was abandoned by many of its supporters because of its wanton corruption, Mr. Bisram conveniently claims that the PPP lost support because its supporters believe that PNC supporters have benefitted more from PPP rule.
He then addressed our nation’s obsession with voting along racial lines by making the equivocal claim that he has never “seen any outward document in which the PPP directly called on its supporters to vote race.” Well, did the PPP “indirectly” make the call? Or did Mr. Bisram see an “inward document” that made a direct or indirect call?
Mr. Bisram’s decision to refer to a PPP document on racial voting rather than to what the PPP said on racial voting amounts to nothing but a disingenuous attempt to hold the PPP guiltless in our nation’s traditional race-appeal politics, by restricting its communication with its constituents to a documented process. Well, everyone knows that meetings at homes and other places are the PPP’s preferred and most-widely used mode of communication with its constituents. With regard to the AFC, however, Mr. Bisram knows what it said   in Indian villages. This begs the question: How come he, a field pollster, has never heard of, or did not report, what the PPP said   in Indian villages about voting along racial lines?
As a patriot, I prefer to spend my time thinking of ways to build our nation. So this is my last response to Mr. Bisram on this issue. I hope that he will join with other patriots in demanding that the PPP government demonstrate its commitment to institutionalized democracy by coming clean on NICIL, reconstituting the constitutionally-mandated Office of the Ombudsman (that existed under the PNC), establishing the constitutionally-mandated Public Procurement Commission, and allowing private radio stations as constitutionally-mandated and court-ordered.
In closing, I want to assure Mr. Bisram that I really don’t need to read anything to understand what has been going on in Guyana because I have been an eyewitness to, and have suffered from, the tragedies our nation has endured.
But if he doubts my ability to process what I have seen with my own eyes, heard with my own ears, and experienced bodily and emotionally, he can suggest “objective sources” from which I could read “historical accounts” about what I have seen, heard, and experienced.
 Lionel Lowe

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