The most bizarre things happen in Guyana

Jul 17, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There isn’t a third, fourth or fifth tier activist in the PPP that is so mentally flawed that he/she believes that an opposition that controls the majority in Parliament would just keep granting the PPP all its wishes and demands without an exchange, no matter how small.

No political party can that be that stupid and there was never such a party in the history of the world. It is tantamount to your neighbour declaring war on your country and your Prime Minister or President opens the gates for the invading army. Even Austria didn’t do that for Hitler.

First, the PPP wanted the Speaker’s position in Parliament. Let us say the opposition had agreed. Next the PPP wanted equal seats with the opposition on all parliamentary committees. Let’s say the opposition had agreed to that.

Next, the PPP wanted the opposition to pass the budget without cuts. Let us say the AFC and APNU had agreed to that. Next, the PPP asked for support from both AFC and APNU for amendments to the anti-money laundering legislation. Let us say that the opposition had agreed to that.

And we arrive at today’s request where the PPP wants parliamentary unanimity for the Amaila Falls Bill. Let us say that APNU and the AFC agree to it tomorrow, what then would be the result of all this opposition support?

There could only be one answer that is even scientifically predictable – APNU and the AFC would virtually commit suicide or become the victims of violent reaction. Which opposition in which country wins a parliamentary majority, but votes with the government in the National Assembly all the time? And in which country would the population gladly receive such an opposition with open arms when they go to visit their constituencies?

No matter how quiet and docile a nation is, if people who put their faith in an opposition that they think have betrayed them, they will react with tempestuous emotions

The people of this country must know that the PPP is playing silly but paradoxically dangerous games by its insistence that APNU and the AFC support the Government on the anti-laundering amendments and on the Amaila Falls legislation without a fair exchange. The PPP knows this too. What the PPP is hoping to achieve is impossible to guess as 2013 grows older. This charade has no explanation unless there is a deadly dimension to it.

It is left up to the analysts to come up with answers, because no matter how illogical is the behaviour of an undemocratic regime, there must be reasons for their inscrutabilities. Hitler’s deputy, Rudolph Hess, at the height of Germany’s domination of the world, took a plane and parachuted into enemy territory. What was his motive? Sigmund Freud told us that once action is not synchronized with motive then mental instability is the factor. So Hess’s behaviour had an explanation after all – he was psychologically unsound.

Is the collective leadership of the PPP mentally unfit to govern? Whatever is your answer there can be no doubt that the PPP’s games are too extreme to dismiss.

How can the PPP keep asking the opposition to vote for its legislative agenda while ignoring the submissions of the AFC and APNU?

The argument I advance is that the PPP is seeking to divide the opposition. If it gives the AFC the Procurement Commission, it gets the anti-laundering amendments approved. APNU could see this as a loss, since it extends the AFC credibility in the society. APNU may then want to cut a deal with the PPP to enhance its own credibility and approve other Bills by the PPP in exchange for some of its demands.

The consequences of this divide and rule policy will be disastrous for democracy and good governance.

My own feeling is that both APNU and the AFC are too skilled in their politics to voluntarily become prisoners of the PPP’s gambit. In fairness to both APNU and the AFC, they will not go down that sickening road.

But Guyana is a sickening exception in contemporary world politics. It is a small unknown country that has produced phenomenal dimensions in political behaviour that if it was a known player on the world scene like small Jamaica, Israel, Ireland, Cuba, Singapore or even tiny Barbados, scholars from the top universities around the globe would have come rushing to publish volumes and volumes on its politics.

There can be no question in my mind that if there was the Roger Khan saga in any of these countries, books would have been written on it by the dozens. The most bizarre things happen in Guyana.

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The most bizarre things happen in Guyana

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