Cheddi Jagan and the PPP in opposition would have fully backed Lindeners

Sep 02, 2012 Letters

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Dear Editor,
The PPP in government with all its corruption, vindictiveness and arrogant sense of injustice and wrongdoing was not the PPP in opposition during those harsh PNC years from 1964 to 1992.
The PPP was a fearless, relentless and determined force in opposition. The PPP was committed to the rights of Guyanese. PPP supporters and Indians throughout Guyana know this fact. They know the shameful change that has overtaken the PPP since Janet Jagan departed. It sickens and disgusts them.
The PPP of Cheddi Jagan, not the PPP of Jagdeo and Ramotar, would have stood proudly and fearlessly behind Lindeners in their cause against a vengeful government. Back then, the PPP was a peoples’ party, a working class machinery that saw wrong as wrong. It was not a party hijacked by elitists and profiteers seeking to fill their pockets.
Cheddi Jagan would have been at the forefront of the battle for Lindeners. Power corrupts everything and absolute power corrupts absolutely but decent-minded PPP supporters know of a PPP of the past that saw nothing wrong in struggle for fairness, justice and equality.
If nothing else, the PPP since Jagdeo has actively tried to destroy that philosophy of Cheddi Jagan in the hearts and minds of PPP supporters and specifically Indians throughout Guyana. By condemning any protest and using threats and intimidation against those who dare to protest wrongdoing, the Jagdeo and Jagdeo/Ramotar regime have made a substantial number of Guyanese sheep in their own land.
More critically, they have eroded that sense of struggle, protest and indignation Cheddi Jagan, Janet Jagan, Ashton Chase and others instilled in PPP supporters to stand up for their rights in the face of evil and misdeed.
Many Indians are now afraid of their own party and cannot even speak out against the manner it was stolen from them by the Jagdeoites who have suspended congresses and elections and hold show of hands voting to handpick presidential candidates.
These are the same predominantly Indians who railed and raged against the sins of the PNC for 28 years and who somehow find voice to castigate the opposition today. These are the same people who stood for hours in picket lines and stood their ground on countless occasions against a mighty PNC military machine. Yet they live in glass houses and throw stones.
The PPP supporters who were actively taught to resist dictatorship are now being mentally trained by NCN, GINA and other despicable mouthpieces to condemn legitimate resistance.
These PPP supporters who in the heyday of the PNC despotism would have marched in solidarity with Lindeners are now being told they should condemn them.
The PPP that epitomized resistance for 28 years is now indoctrinating its own supporters that protesting for one’s rights is wrong. The problem with the PPP since Jagdeo is not only its corruption, constitutional contumeliousness, venality, transgressions, abuse of power and self-enrichment. It is the bigger problem of what this degrading bunch running the PPP has done to the psyche of Indians in Guyana. It has weakened the ability of its supporters to speak out against depravity.
It is suddenly shameful to protest and to stand up for yourself in the eyes of the party and those who do so are rampaging and violent. It is better to get on your knees and take whatever is being dished out without complaint. It is the same affliction that trapped PNC supporters under the PNC.
PPP supporters have lost their moral core. They have lost their sense of injustice and their relativism and empathy. They have been trained in Pavlovian fashion to reject legitimate protest as a wholesome thing when the PPP comes from a strong tradition of protesting abomination.
By accepting the calls and psychological retraining to reject something as fundamental as their right to stand up for their rights, these PPP supporters have surrendered their virtues and values.
Some people relinquish morality for something good and uplifting in return. In Guyana, Africans and Indians have given up their dignity and integrity for political devilry and impiety. It is time we start looking beyond our own narrow windows and try to see what our history and identity really is.
The PPP was a forceful opposition. Yet today when this nation has been handed a welcome gift of a minority government to bring much needed change to our country’s political domination, many who support the PPP forget and dismiss the role the PPP played as a powerful opposition in restoring democracy and economic normalcy to Guyana. How could we forget the 28 years of struggle the PPP delivered to help change Guyana? An opposition has a role and it is right to condemn it when it fails in that role.
However, some PPP supporters in this country refuse to see any role for the opposition. They characterize it as a cancer that should be completely removed. It is the same mentality some PNC supporters held from 1964 to 1992.
I will make this abundantly clear – the PPP in opposition was far better and accomplished far more for the people of this country and their emancipation than the PPP in government.
M. Maxwell

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