How race/ethnic voters try to use third parties like WPA and AFC

May 03, 2013 Letters

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Dear Editor,

Reading Freddie Kissoon’s article “Wakenaam’s wakeup call, but does it matter?” (KN, April 4, 2013) I was drawn to the lesson in psychology he described. A PPP stronghold, Cane Grove, had a dust problem emanating from a rice mill. The residents asked the AFC to help them in their plight after the very government they voted for (PPP) refused to listen to their pleas. The PPP took them for granted and expectedly did nothing to rein in the rice mill.
The AFC showed up numerous times in Cane Grove before the election and tried valiantly through several avenues to halt this egregiousness. A young man from Cane Grove reportedly confronted Kissoon and others after the election complaining that the problem still plagued Cane Grove. He admitted he voted for the PPP. Kissoon rightly describes this psyche as sadomasochistic behaviour.
It cannot be anything else.
The same thing happens in PNC strongholds where the AFC is called in after the PNC abandons its supporters yet come Election Day these very people will put their X next to the Palm Tree. This same phenomenon happened to the WPA.
Call it backstabbing, hypocrisy or facetiousness or whatever you want to define it, it is symptomatic of the sickening psychosis of the Guyanese nation when it comes to politics. That this madness continues fifty-plus years after the horrible race wars of the sixties and after many like Rodney. Now the AFC has valiantly tried to alter the disease, to remind us of the power of the failed human consciousness in Guyana and the psychic damage race, ethnicity and moral shallowness continues to play in Guyana. Guyana is made up of resilient, resourceful, hardworking and family-oriented people. But Guyana is also made up of a multitude of political hypocrites.
If people cannot take moral stands on matters fundamental to their very survival and the ability to achieve a better life, how can they expect good government, positive governance, quality leadership and equal share in the spoils of their country? Guyana is a case in duplicity at its pinnacle. It is an experiment in high-class political-psychological scampishness.
The third parties are seen by those who vote for race parties (PPP and PNC) as instruments to use and discard. They are used to achieve the changes the very governments and parties these folks vote for refuse to offer them despite their political support.
Then whether these changes are achieved or not, these third parties are discarded. This is the history of third politics in this country when every single third party has preached an agenda that would have transformed this country.
The UF capitalist thrust would have transformed Guyana into a Singapore rather than the cesspool of economic drudgery Guyana became under the PNC and now the PPP. Peter D’Aguiar would have obtained the full support of the Americans and the incontrovertible evidence is that most nations that sided with the capitalist West emerged from the collapse of the Cold War on a far better economic footing than the communist/socialist/Soviet bloc nations.
Guyana has largely rejected the unity message and agenda of the WPA and AFC for divisive race politics, which has given us nothing but extreme poverty, inequality and racial exclusionism. Even worse, race politics was packaged with communist and socialist economic platforms that proved disastrous.
I know it is harsh but the Guyanese people deserve the governments and parties they vote for because they embrace indecent politics. As long as a majority within the two major ethnic groups (Indians and Africans) favour race politics, third parties will remain a wedge used and abused by these same PPP and PNC supporters afraid of confronting the despots within their own parties and expecting the third parties to do the dirty work they lack the courage to do.
Third parties are viewed by many as fodder for convenient use, only to be discarded when the aims of the race voters are met. These voters want third parties to agitate for changes they themselves refuse or are afraid to agitate against their own parties and government. The WPA and AFC are there to do the dirty work only to be backstabbed when voting day arrives.
When this happens, it emboldens the PPP and PNC to continue their abuse and dismissal of their own supporters because it reminds them that these voters are trapped and stuck with the PPP and PNC. Exploitation begets exploitation. One cannot exploit legitimate third parties and then backstab them and expect better treatment from the race parties. It will not work.
The Guyanese people have to recognize a basic construct of Guyanese politics – it is all about power.
M. Maxwell

 

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