Where are the defenders of the PPP fighting those who have hijacked the party?

Jan 26, 2013 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
Three seminal events happened in this country in the past two years.
The first was the PPP’s loss of majority power. Not only did this shatter the party’s political invincibility, it also captured the inner rage of a country starting to overcome fear and the politics of cowardice in confrontation of a corrupt regime.
The second event was the internal democratization of that pariah of dictatorship, the PNC. This rejuvenated that party and led to political restoration in 2011.
The third moving force that shook this country in the past few years is the descent into outright tyranny by the PPP.
Senior legends of the party were harassed and kicked out. The Stalinist leadership seized the party and hijacked it away from the rank and file membership by cancelling internal elections and by demonizing those who stood up to them.
It is despicable that in a world gripped in a growing tsunami of democracy filled with Arab springs, African democratic renewal and South American political stability, that the PPP has become a party of repressive shame.
For all his maniacal power paranoia and his rigging, at least Forbes Burnham maintained a ludicrous pretension of elections and a masquerade of democracy. At least he still gave a handful of seats to the PPP. At least he still listened to Cheddi Jagan and his atrociously destructive ideas of nationalization and other communist claptrap that, combined with Burnham’s socialist idiocy, sunk this country to a laughing stock.
Not so for this current version of the PPP. It is no longer a case of not listening. It is a case of debilitating deafness, the loss of the ability to hear.
There is not even an attempt to lie, deceive and beguile here like Burnham with his election day circuses.
This is obliteration of the voices of hundreds of thousands of PPP supporters. This is summary execution of democracy for a group that held steadfastly onto and nourished on the notion of democracy for 28 years. This is outright and callous disintegration of an entire group of people that support the PPP party.
This is a blatant denigration and flagrant dismissal of the psychological attachment the traditional supporters have felt for the PPP.
This is theft of PPP supporters’ right to vote, their right to representation and their right to be heard.
For it is this very right the PPP laid its life on the line for 28 years and reminded its supporters that this was the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the heart and the soul of their very existence. Now, look at what the tyrants are doing to this sacred value they so worshipped.
What makes this even more soul-destroying is that these same PPP supporters sent a warning to this PPP leadership on November 28, 2011. Yet, the hijackers of the PPP continue this relentless ideological, cultural, psychological and emotional destruction of those who support the party.
The truth is that the PNC is now more democratic than the PPP. This annexation of the PPP by a handful of largely Jagdeoites and their backers has disconnected the PPP from its working class base. That base is humming the profound sound of silence. They have gone quiet. There is no baring of teeth or frothing of valour.
There is no resistance or revolutionary boiling. There is only grave silence and a harrowing apathy. No stampede to battle the takeover of a party by a few, only echoes of those running away.
On what moral basis can PPP supporters demonize the PNC today when the PNC practices internal democracy and their own party practices despotism? At least when the PNC fell from power, there was a struggle within the party to save the party. Out of those wars has come better internal democracy.
The PNC fought for dear life when it faced political death. On the other hand, the PPP is going gently into that night with barely a whimper. There is nothing but debilitating silence to this theft of the PPP. How do you condone internal dictatorship but claim justification to revoke external dictatorship?
The old trickery of blaming the PNC bogeyman, even from Ralph Ramkarran, will not work anymore when moral legitimacy has eluded the PPP.
How is the PNC, which has held its own recent democratic internal elections, to be blamed for electoral robbery within the PPP?
How does fear of a party practicing internal democracy lead to electoral destruction and rampant authoritarianism within another party?
Don’t these fallacies suffocate PPP supporters, members and backers and awaken them to the truth?
Where are the PPP fighters? This is a party of Cheddi Jagan, Balram Singh Rai and Moses Nagamootoo. Where are the men of courage who will stand up to the rape of people’s rights?
Freedom starts at home. Dictatorship at home will lead to dictatorship out of the house. Those who rig and deny democracy at home are likely to do so outside of the home. Freedom does not emerge without sacrifice and courage. The grandest irony is that any group that replaces the PPP in power could see this lack of will, fear and waffling weakness from the PPP supporters in battling their own despots as evidence of an inherent tendency to capitulate in the face of wrong and tyranny.
This staggering silence from PPP supporters to the hijacking of their party is a stain on their cultural, emotional and psychological template, a stain that could be used to justify authoritarianism when the PPP loses power.
If this crop of PPP leaders can do this to their own supporters, they will sacrifice them for power when faced with losing it.
They will have no problem subjugating them for national power just like they have for party power. If PPP supporters continue this sound of silence, we are headed for a deafening explosion in this country.
M. Maxwell

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