Kwayana’s use of constitution preamble is confusing elephant’s trunk for elephant

Jun 11, 2012 Letters

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Dear Editor,
In a letter to SN on 6-5-12 titled “the preamble to the Guyana constitution commits us to finding a system of governance which permits a ‘broad-based participation in national decision making”, Mr.  Eusi Kwayana again advanced an age old irresponsible demand for political power.  No surprising metamorphosis in an open aligned advocacy for the PNC which he wishes to assure has no motivational Brer Anancy-like slickness or cunning.
Whiles Mr. Kwayana is most famous for proposing the partitioning of Guyana, he is yet to embrace workable federalism which accommodates the best course for all to decide their own futures, united within a single country.
What can fundamentally reassure mindsets which have historically cultivated abhorrence to seemingly being governed by those of another “undeserving” race and their culture but still demands accommodating flip flop parity with the same alleged “undesirables” within a national government other than the right to be free?  What has fundamentally changed in Mr. Kwayana’s are not his goals but his repackaging of this new quest for political power by the PNC recalibrated within APNU. Could all this new wisdom now validate Jagan’s PPP secret talks with the PNC in the 1980s?
It was Mr. Ravi Dev’s seminal analysis “for a future peace” in his weekly column in the KN of 6-10-12 which now preempts future prolonged acrimonious bickering to resolve this race standoff.
What can be more exciting than Mr. Dev’s refreshingly reassuring wisdom wherein he highlights that “in this narrative both “sides” are morally right: the conflict is not between good and evil but between (the available now desirable) “goods” on which each is making exclusive claim? Isn’t this the situation that our mutually exclusive narratives of victimhood with its facile binary oppositions have delivered us into?  If Mr. Kwayana still offers promise of a binding resolution in resorting to the 1980 Guyana constitution which is indeed the highest law of the land, it may be a good compromise step. In quoting the preamble i.e. the warm up or beginning, Mr. Kwayana is actually equating it to the main body of its contents.
Reliance on the preamble can hardly be the knockout punch with which Mr. Kwayana hopes to convince his critics about the strength of his case.
He can do better. Mr. Kwayana’s thrust is actually torpedoed using a lesson from a close friendship he had with a former native Buxton Pandit; not a contradictory term from yesterday.
Pandit Sama Persaud of Annandale (relocated from neighboring Buxton during the 1960’s race riots) was a good friend of Mr.  Kwayana. All those who were familiar with Pandit Sama knew he was a non-orthodox Hindu Pandit who belonged to a more revolutionary Hindu denomination.
It was common knowledge that he and his father Pandit Latchman Persaud found inspiration and solace through the Vedas which they viewed as the fountainhead and final authority of God for Hindus and others.
In fact Mr. Kwayana was a prominent speaker at Pandit Sama’s funeral. Only a close circle knew  that Pandit Persaud and his father Pandit Latchman Persaud were very financially generous in times of need both to Mr. Kwayana and his extended King family  in Buxton and afterwards. Since both Pandits never personally pocketed the donations received for Hindu religious work they instead gave it as charity to “deserving” people as Mr. Kwayana has acknowledged in his tribute to his close friend.
The close relationship remained strong between both Mr. Kwayana and Pandit Persaud as both served prominently in Dr Jagan’s first 1953 PPP government, one as a PPP minister and the other a Senator.  Mr. Kwayana has also documented the impact on his cultural awakening when he was “found” overlooking a traditional Hindu religious yagya or crusade as a youth.
Spirited debates with orthodox Hindus friends and Pandit Persaud’ s reform denomination  often found them at odds in the early 20th century . The orthodox placed more emphasis on the Ramayana and or the philosophical end of the Vedas known as Vedanta. Pandit Sama’s thrust was reliance on the entire Vedas rather than any specific part.  With Mr. Kwayana lifelong close friendship with Pandit Sama it would be inconceivable that he is unaware of his close friend’s knockout punch in those historical debates.
“The tail of the elephant is not the entire elephant”.  In Mr. Kwayana’s reliance on the preamble of Guyana’s constitution he needs to avoid grasping and hoisting himself and baggage with the elephant’s trunk onto its back to go for a ride.  Mr. Kwayana has long been aware that neither the trunk nor tusks at the front of the elephant make up the entire elephant.  Often, most rapid vehicles find them with their trunks in the rear. Now that he has positioned himself to frontally face the elephant he must keep in mind the behaviors and challenges of Guyana’s elephant(s) and from which continent they hail.  Our Guyana elephants are not easy to manage.
Sultan Mohamed

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