Drivers, maids, waitresses, psychology and invincibility

Jun 23, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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In a previous column, I mentioned what one of the former attendants of the New Thriving Restaurant told me about what a certain little dictator (who has one of the fanciest swimming pools; lives on the East Coast) said about the Public Service Union and its head, Patrick Yarde.
The Champion (of God knows what) and his underlings, including the swimming pool man, were dining in a reserved room.
The dictators are never discreet. Restaurant attendants are nobodies in their eyes so they speak freely, totally oblivious that these “lesser mortals” can hear what comes out of their mouths. Also, when they are drunk, they mouth off wildly. The swimming pool man was overheard saying that he can deal with Patrick Yarde anytime and will soon break the union and show Yarde who has power.
When you want to hear about power boasting you have to talk to drivers, maids and other employees. They hear sensitive things. They see intriguing sights. Let me repeat what I once wrote here. I was with Gerhard Ramsaroop and Kojo MacPherson in Cane Grove in the midnight hour checking on a rice mill that was spewing dust like when sand blows in a storm in the desert. While Ramsaroop and MacPherson were filming, I moved away, went into the darkness and sat next to the trench.
An SUV drove up to me. The driver got out, took out his gun, and came right into my face. He wanted to know what a stranger was doing in Cane Grove at that uncivilized hour. After his identification of me, we began to chat. He was one of the security details to the former Big Man (no harm can come to him; he has migrated).
What you heard from this guy would turn your stomach inside out. The power boasting; the ménage á trios escapades in Pradoville One; the incessant clubbing where money flows like water from a fountain, the open homosexual trysts, the nocturnal visits to drug kings and rich money launderers, the despoiling of underage girls.
As I listened, I wondered why people like me spent my youthful life harassing Forbes Burnham. What I heard convinced me that Burnham was a far better leader than the fools that took over after 1992. The pattern that emerged from talking to the drivers, waitresses, maids, secretaries is one of invincibility. The power wielders are so assured of their domination that they feel they can do what they want and the country will have to accept its fate.
This is the mono-causal explanation for Mr. Jagdeo’s autocracy. The Corbin factor does not militate against the efficacy of this theory. Since Mr. Corbin did not pursue an aggressive agenda and his volte-face contributed to Mr. Jagdeo’s hegemony, then the plausibility of the theory stands, that is, Mr. Jagdeo got bolder and ended up in a wild authoritarian mode, because there were no attempts from any section of the society to fight his oligarchic policies.
From Jagdeo to Ramotar, inclusive of the Luncheon/Teixeira ring, the psychology of PPP leadership is that the Government is impregnable.
I come now to the main point of this article – the PPP Government will implement the electricity increase. The consensus I have received from opposition quarters, civil society actors and the public is that the Government is bluffing; it knows it cannot embark on such madness. I beg to disagree. I will use political theory to argue my case.
My delineation of the contours and dimensions of dictatorship have been repetitive on this page. I have postulated the concept of irrationality in dictatorship. I believe the textbook supports me. Authoritarian systems cannot grasp the fundamental weaknesses in their power lustfulness, because inherent in domination is irrationality and invincibility. The consequence of such maximization of power is the loss of reality.
Mubarak was totally oblivious to the reality that he couldn’t send camel-riders with swords into a demonstration chopping people to death. Gaddafi was blind to the reality that he couldn’t send snipers on rooftops shooting demonstrators to death. Mubarak and Gaddafi did these things because their psychology drove them to it.
Mr. Jagdeo’s irrational use of power continues with the Ramotar administration. The psychology of dictatorship empowers autocratic leaders to think of invincibility.
No one should fool himself that the party monarchs are rational to think that the electricity hike of 26 percent is a mind-blowing mistake that will create disaster (the Brazilian bus fare protest will not deter the dictators). Leaders living with omnipotent thoughts and with freedom to do what they want do not care to look on the ground to see reality. When they do come to that, it is always too late.

 

 

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