If only these erstwhile critics could humble themselves and introspect

Jun 20, 2013 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
My reading of the Kaieteur News of June 16, 2013 was very evidentially revealing. Evident was a striking similarly between the PNCR and the PPP although they are strikingly different political parties.
This evidence was, presumably unwittingly, presented in two of the articles of that edition. The first, a letter by Hydar Ally captioned: Time to stop playing politics with the sugar industry. The second, the APNU column captioned: The People’s Progressive Party … more centralistic than democratic.
Hydar Ally in his letter concludes: It is time to stop playing politics with the sugar industry. The irony is in Hydar Ally’s apparent state of somnambulism (sleeping while walking), while actively calling for the halt to politics in the sugar industry, he seems to be in a state of forgetfulness with regard to the decades of politics that the PPP played with the industry.
The said political and economic significance of the industry, which he identified as being subjected to politicking, were the objects of politicking in the form of strikes (manifestations of power) and burning of canes (economic sabotage) during the PPP’s years in opposition, to the point where striking is culturally engrained in the industrial practice of those workers and has become a dysfunctionality which was nurtured by the PPP; now affects the PPP; and is blamed on others, by the PPP.
The APNU column refers to the PPP’s anachronistic internal structures (anatomy) and its centrist procedures (physiology). Here the PNCR, like the PPP, is in a state of somnambulism with regard to its own problem with freedom of expression and democratic election of its leadership. Imagine the PNCR criticising the PPP for “freedom in discussion – unity in action” (democratic centralism) and ascribing to that practice the meaning 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.” While the ascription might be correct, the irony is ‘pot telling kettle that its bottom is black’. Though the mechanisms of control might be different, the PNCR is also a centrist party. In fact it is this centrism that affects much of the operations of political parties; NGOs and even the churches in Guyana.
If only these erstwhile critics could humble themselves and introspect, the political culture of Guyana may witness a beneficial transformation to Good Governance which is so evidently absent, both in terms of a demonstrative understanding and its practice.
Vincent Alexander

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