The People’s Progressive Party…more centralistic than democratic

Jun 16, 2013 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

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Hari Narayen ‘Ralph’ Ramkarran’s detailed diagnosis of the disease that is daily debilitating the People’s Progressive Party, has exposed that party’s dysfunctional internal procedures. The PPP is preparing for its much postponed 30th Congress on 2nd – 4th August at Port Mourant, Corentyne, but change should not be anticipated.
Little is expected to occur to alter that Party’s collective mindset, the composition of its collective leadership, and its collective approach to the way it has been governing Guyana over the past two decades. This might seem perplexing to the general public, but not to hardcore party officials who profit most from the parasitical, highly-centralised system of control it has imposed on the state.
The PPP was established 63 years ago as a mass-based party. It aimed then at mobilising the masses – the greatest number of Guyanese from all social strata and ethnic groups – to challenge the colonial order of the day.  It was very successful for the first five years. Many poor Africans and Indians and a few prominent Portuguese and Chinese, flocked to the Party. The PPP was elected to office for seven years in 1957-1964.
The PPP in 1969, five years after losing office, transformed itself from being (in its own words) “a loose mass party into a disciplined Leninist-type of party.” It felt that this was essential for it to regain and retain political power.  The Party, with this transformation, adopted Leninist organisational principles and methods which it defined to be: “democratic centralism and collective leadership in decision-making”, among other things.
The PPP’s present Constitution – designed to entrench the ideology of Marxism-Leninism and assist in the transformation of the party to a Leninist party of the new type” – was adopted in 1977, long before most living Guyanese were born. Little has changed. Control of the Party’s Central Committee and Executive Committee has been inherited by a cabal of members who have scant interest in socialist or Marxist principles. The current Constitution places control of the party in the hands of its leaders, not its members.
The PPP’s leaders simply do not want to relinquish this control that luck and long service have bequeathed to them. This is because, as Ramkarran has warned, “the PPP’s detailed economic policy choices are subject to the influence of the growing and increasingly powerful entrepreneurial and bureaucratic class who benefit enormously from procurement and other government activities.”
The PPP’s leaders have found it profitable to preserve the system it adopted 44 years ago and the Constitution it promulgated 36 years ago.  This explains, for example, how the Party has been functioning without a ‘party leader’ since Cheddi Jagan’s death 16 years ago. Central Committee members adhere to these organisational practices and principles, especially democratic centralism, an invention not of the philosophical Karl Marx, but of the conspiratorial Vladimir Lenin.
Democratic centralism was defined by its author as, “freedom in discussion – unity in action.” This means that, once a decision had been arrived at, it was no longer open to dissent. All members are required to accept the applicability of those decisions and, thereafter, to subordinate their own individuality to the majority.
This obsolete system prevailed in the Soviet Union and other communist countries, and is widely regarded as more centralistic than democratic. Ordinary party members elect delegates to Congress, who elect the Central Committee, who then elect the Executive Committee, who then elect the leaders who run the Party.  Ordinary members, simply, are not allowed to elect Party leaders ‘directly.’ They, therefore, have no real control over who will emerge eventually as their leaders. This is exactly what led to the alienation that was evident on the Corentyne in the November 2011 General and Regional elections.
Congress after congress, decade after decade, the same two or three dozen faces seem to reappear on the Central Committee, despite the fact that the PPP commands an electoral vote of over 160,000. Central Committee members once installed in office or in the Cabinet, similarly, become virtually immune to removal, regardless of how corrupt or incompetent they are.
This explains how leaders in former Communist regimes – such as the Castro family in Cuba and the Kim family Korea today – remain unremovable for decades. This is an example of essential Leninist authoritarian practice which distrusts the freely-expressed, but wildly unpredictable, will of the masses, but places supreme confidence in a small, self-perpetuating elite group.
Intelligent, young Guyanese, in this era of improved education and communication, resent being dictated to by such a group, or to be part of such a system. Some young rebels tried to change this highly-centralised Leninist system at the 27th Congress of the PPP in July 2002. Their motion for the posts of leader, chairman and general secretary to be openly contested was defeated, partly through the efforts of veterans who, expectedly, seem serenely satisfied with the status quo.
The PPP (in its own words) is no longer a ‘mass party.’ It is a political machine primed to win and wield power. Simpliciter. Ordinary Guyanese who constitute the majority of the population, however, should understand better how a ruling party’s adherence to the archaic doctrine of democratic centralism can affect the destiny of the nation.
As the PPP approaches its next Congress in August, its General Secretary Donald Ramotar should remember the old aphorism, “He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils”.

 

 

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