A country’s poisonous chalice

Aug 24, 2012 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The opposition politicians are really in a bind. One can go so far as to say their situation is most tragic. But of course, they are hard-headed people. They will not embrace independent minds and listen to their views. And this goes for the small WPA party which has a glorious past and which should be the last party you would expect that kind of selfishness from.
So what is wrong with our opposition politicians? They live in a world of self-delusion. Whether they want to break out of it is debatable. Everywhere in this country that our Parliamentarians from the Opposition go, they would receive a nice, generous reception from a warm and friendly people named Guyanese. The tragedy comes in because within this generosity lies something that cannot be neatly described at the moment, but briefly, here it is.
Opposition politicians are told how good they are doing, that their efforts are admired and they must keep up the fight. That is not the inner truth coming from the Guyanese population who speak to them. It can be put in sociological language; “These people just being nice.”
The persons who know this more than the politicians are the journalists and the independent activists. The way they speak to us, they don’t to our politicians.
I am on the vigil and People’s Parliament on High Street, outside the National Assembly since it began on Wednesday, August 15. It was while leaving that vigil on Thursday midnight that I was attacked. People – and I mean lots of people – would stop and talk to me at the vigil, and the criticism of the AFC and APNU, particularly APNU, would be sarcastic and tremendously cynical.
Would the AFC and APNU listen to me? No, they wouldn’t. That is not in the nature of our political culture. Remember I am Freddie Kissoon, an independent mind that they will not embrace easily because I am not one of them.
I will discuss two phenomena in the rest of this essay – the one-year completion of Parliament and the Linden crisis. I was a speaker in many fora in Linden on the intended rise in the electricity rate before the crisis broke out. I spent time in Linden during the conflagration and spoke at several huge rallies. I was at the funeral. I can tell the APNU leadership in the most truthful language; the Linden people did not and do not see their role in the controversy as being an admirable one.
All Lindeners would tell you that the Linden people did their thing and not the politicians. Sharma Solomon and Aubrey Norton were accepted as their leaders. I don’t know what will become of Norton in the APNU hierarchy, but Norton is going to be hard-pressed to deliver Linden to APNU in both local government and national elections, particularly if there are powerful competitors to take on APNU.
Subsumed under this is the unbelievable frustration Georgetown had with APNU over mass protest in the capital city to aid the struggle on the Linden front. I may not be a great analyst, but I believe I am a competent one, and my reading in Georgetown of the passion is that Georgetown and Buxton would have responded to mass calls by APNU.
I have been told that APNU chose not to engage the PPP because that is exactly what the PPP wanted in order to create an Indian reaction. I do believe this is a plausible explanation, but it still leaves APNU and PNC constituencies asking questions about the future of Guyana.
Now for Parliament: Parliament is now in recess (My God, for two months). Countless persons have said to me that they have not seen what Parliament has achieved for democracy and freedom since the combined opposition achieved a one-seat majority. Writing as a commentator, I would agree. The one-seat majority has become this nation’s poisonous chalice. The AFC and APNU are imbued with a Parliamentary spirit. They have a majority and they feel it is the key to unlocking the future of Guyana.
Energies are now taken up with Parliament. The People’s Parliament outside the real Parliament has not had a visit by any real Parliamentarians except for Desmond Trotman of the WPA.
Sharma Solomon did the wise thing and turned up after the signing of the Linden pact. The new Parliamentary configuration and the one-seat majority may be the undoing of the combined opposition if they do not read what their supporters want. The opposition is thinking that it may win in a snap poll. I wonder! Really!

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A country’s poisonous chalice

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