Hypocrisy that defines the DNA of this country

May 09, 2013 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Freddie Kissoon gets it partially wrong in his column “East Indians in Guyana 1964- 2013” (KN, May 6, 2013). Kissoon stated “From 1964, Guyana was a country of contest between an African versus an Indian replicated in the PPP versus the PNC.”
The Indian-African, PPP-PNC contest started from the early fifties, not 1964.Kissoon further stated “In 1970, Guyana began to experience a strange and non-traditional cataclysm in its political evolution. With colossal hopes and expectations which came with the fall of colonial rule gradually disappearing, the Guyanese people began to question the democratic credentials of their post-colonial leaders.
In what was a phenomenal twist in ethnic politics, the African middle class, African security forces, the rural African peasantry and sections of the African urban strata began to militate against their own government, influenced by a charismatic scholar, Walter Rodney. The beneficiaries of this incredible break in the pattern of ethnic politics were the East Indians.”
I disagree with major parts of that statement and believe it must be qualified. Ordinary Indians did not benefit from Rodney’s valour. One could say the PPP leadership benefited, if backstabbing and undermining Rodney counts as a benefit.
The period from the formation of the WPA to Rodney’s death is notorious and heinous in our history. This is the period when the PPP and PNC made their boldest efforts to secretly share power against the wishes and without the knowledge of their supporters. This would have created a one-party dictatorship of the PPP and PNC that would have made Stalin and Pol Pot look like altar boys. Thank God we dodged that bullet.
What were the reasons for this sudden upsurge of entreaties to power sharing between the PPP and PNC during the heydays of the WPA?
Well, the PNC decided to try to weaken the WPA and Rodney by splitting the opposition. Burnham knew Rodney matched and even outshone him intellectually, charismatically, and in terms of fearlessness. Burnham knew that Rodney’s appeal was his ability to win a sizable pool of African support and more critically, African support from the armed forces, which would weaken Burnham and the PNC and cause it to lose power in any military struggle.
In yet another brilliant stratagem that continued his tradition of constantly outplaying, outsmarting and out-thinking the PPP, Burnham decided he had to con the PPP by throwing empty promises of national unity governments and power sharing. This would bring the PPP to the negotiating table and while negotiating with the PNC, the PPP could not support the WPA in any concrete fashion, despite its cosmetic rhetoric to its supporters.
Burnham knew the PPP’s desperation for power would create this PPP-WPA alienation. He also knew that if the PNC extinguished Rodney in this environment, the PPP with its backing from the majority of the population would not lead any damaging reprisal or resistance or civil disobedience that would imperil the PNC.
So, Burnham played the PPP for a fool with facetious power sharing signals or with appeasement of Jaganite agendas such as nationalization. This kept the PPP on a PNC leash and effectively divided the PPP and WPA on the critical issue of joint concrete confrontation of the PNC dictatorship. On the PPP side, the PPP felt the PNC was most threatened with the arrival of Rodney and his capacity to snare a major chunk of African support within time. The PPP was also threatened by Rodney’s militancy, fearlessness and his multi-ethnic message, for Rodney appealed to militant Indians and that minority of younger, progressive Indian voters.
The PPP knew Rodney was a game changer simply because of his courage, which was lacking within the PPP leadership. One could view the PPP of the period as a pack of ‘rice eaters’ barking behind fences at the PNC mastiffs patrolling the road, whereas Rodney ventured onto the roadway to confront the PNC bulldogs.
So, instead of snatching that momentous opportunity to drive the stake in the PNC, the PPP opted to undermine and backstab Rodney and the WPA by seeking power sharing deals with the PNC that every simpleton knew would never materialize.
This is the context of the coincidence of the rise of the WPA and the greatest period of PPP-PNC collaboration and attempts at power sharing. It is also fitting that during this greatest period of PPP-PNC collaboration and thereafter to Burnham’s death in 1985, the PNC’s terror, intimidation, reprisals, imprisonments, constitutional repression, manipulation, abuse and tyranny reached its pinnacle.
Finally, Rodney did not, as Kissoon suggests, capture the whole of the “African middle class, African security forces, the rural African peasantry”. Rodney got support of a section of these groups as well as a section of “the African urban strata”. This is because, despite Burnham and the PNC’s abominations and economic devastation to them and regardless of Rodney’s charm, charisma, morality, decency and political appeal, Africans were never going to leave the PNC en masse.
Racism and ethnic factors have prevented Indians and Africans from voting for the right things in Guyana. This is the lifeblood of hypocrisy that defines the DNA of this country.  When I wrote that race voters have used and discarded third parties, the case of the WPA under Rodney is the most tragic one. That is not to say that Rodney was not naïve and inexperienced and too trusting, but these shortcomings do not absolve the PPP and PNC for their actions.
M. Maxwell

 

 

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