When autocrats used the most sacred words in the dictionary of freedom

Feb 21, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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I did a compilation of all the speeches of every PPP Member of Parliament since the Tenth Parliament convened. It is outside the scope of this column to reproduce this mountain of rhetoric because of space constraint.
In any case this is not the purpose of this article. What I have intended to do is to offer a synopsis of the PPP’s use of the dictionary of democracy in its accusation of dictatorship against the parliamentary opposition of APNU and AFC.
If a human, just as intelligent as Homo sapiens, were to come from another planet and examine this charge of dictatorship against the majority opposition in the National Assembly by the PPP parliamentarians, the most compelling conclusion would be that an almost perfect government, perhaps one of the most democratic in the world, is being confronted for unjustified reasons and hounded down by an undemocratic opposition.
That human from outer space, after examining the extensive and intensive vocabulary of freedom by the PPP with its accompanying resort to democratic terminologies, could only conclude that in the impasse between the PPP on the one hand and the combined opposition on the other in 2013, is about the good, the PPP versus the evil, the APNU/AFC.  The Machiavellian irony is that it is the reverse in reality.
Every sacred adjective, every passionate noun in the dictionary of justice have been used by the parliamentarians of the PPP to condemn the AFC and APNU on all the action in the Tenth Parliament done by the opposition.
The list includes the choice of the Speaker, the numerical composition of every conceivable committee, the downsizing of certain items in the 2012 national budget, the motions passed by the opposition, the amendment to Bills passed by the opposition, and the no-confidence motion against Clement Rohee.
Every democratic sentiment was conjured up by the PPP parliamentary bloc to denounce the AFC and APNU.
The opposition has been called racist, anti-working class, dictatorial, disrespectful of the rule of law, in violation of the Constitution, in contempt of court, contemptuous of principles and ethics and morality, flippant about the rights of the Guyanese people, intoxicated with power, have shown scant regard for freedoms of the Guyanese people and are seeking to remove a government that was legitimately elected in a free election.
On every count, the PPP over the past twenty years has practised with depraved and bestial insensitivities, the crimes and abominations it has accused the AFC and APNU of in the Tenth Parliament since the November 2011 national elections. For the student of Guyanese politics, this must be tantamount to Dracula accusing the police of stealing blood to drink.
For the political analyst, the PPP’s use of democratic semantics to denounce the opposition in Parliament may have no parallel in modern world politics.
What is unimaginable is that these people are resorting to the dictionary of freedom that they themselves have torn up, thrown upon the ubiquitous garbage heap and burned since they came to power in 1992. It would take volumes to enumerate the injustices of the PPP’s elected dictatorship since 1992.
For the commentator, he/she has to identify some of the most sickening ones in the phantasmagoria of hypocrisy now playing out inside the National Assembly.
Here is a very short selection. The PPP says that Clement Rohee is being denied his right to speak. This very Rohee was angry when a policeman, David Ramnarine, asserted his constitutional right to speak. Mr. Ramnarine paid the price of banishment for so doing. Nine CANU officers woke up a morning and told to take a lie detector test.
They were told they all failed and were peremptorily dismissed. Mr. Rohee has rights that other Guyanese don’t. But not only him, all PPP personnel. They have rights that are special, so when they violate the rights of others, it must count for nothing because they are superior beings.
Where is the parallel in modern politics when the party of a Prime Minister or a President loses a national parliamentary election then says to the very parliament, “I am the elected Prime Minister, I am the elected President, you must adhere to my policies, you must pass my legislation that I send to you, you must not forget, I was elected.”
The other side of that coin is that the Parliament was not elected.
Finally, the Guyana budget presentation has no competing example around the globe. An elected Parliament must do what a minority government tells it. The rape of democracy continues by people who say they are democratic. Does this tragedy have an end?

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