Additional notes on dictatorship

Aug 27, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The PPP has now settled on its leadership. Legally, the leader of the PPP is Mr. Clement Rohee. The hierarchy includes Bharrat Jagdeo, Kellawan Lall, Roger Luncheon, Clinton Collymore, Neil Kumar. It is not a refreshing ambience and the reason for that is that dictatorship never opens the window for refreshing breeze to come through.
Without having to purchase a book on politics, the PPP just had to look across at our neighbour, the USA and they would have had access to one of the best instruction manuals in politics. There wasn’t a single Republican Party official who believed that Barack Obama would have won re-election. Around the world the talk was that Obama was in trouble and he may barely make it or lose. There were simply no wondrous transformation of American society and economy to give Obama a decisive victory.
Obama was re-elected and quite a substantial amount of political analysts has concluded that Obama won because he simply had no credible opposition. The Republican Party was a house full of people who did not know what was going on in America, the changes that were taking place in America and how obnoxious Americans felt about the Republican Party’s attitude to freedom and the open arms policy that made America the greatest empire since Pax Britannica and the Roman Empire.
The Republican Party seems to have learnt its lessons. It is bound to put a candidate in the next race that would appear to be an Obama-like personality. It will avoid immigrant-bashing and it will speak more respectfully of the lower classes and come across less as a fat class party of billionaires. Of course, the PPP will ignore these vital lessons from across the Atlantic. And three reasons explain this. The American Republican Party is disposed to intense competition among its leaders and the respect for open, internal democratic elections decide who wins.
Secondly, the Republican Party has to appeal to other race groups to win the presidency, which is something that the PPP has no fear about. For the PPP, if you appeal to Indians’ sense of ethnic insanity, you can easily win elections. Thirdly, unlike the Republican Party, the PPP is enmeshed in the exercise of power, which is neatly enmeshed in the culture of dictatorship. It is this inexorable ghost of dictatorship that prevents the PPP from creative thinking. Creative thinking and dictatorship never meet and will never meet. They are opposites. Creative thinking might put the Republicans in the White House in the next election.
It was the culture of dictatorship that has put the ineligible faces in the PPP’s executive, which is where the crucial decisions are made. Clement Rohee is simply an enigma in politics. With more than thirty five years on the scene, he is not a person that attracts admirers. It is as if Mr. Rohee is not interested in wanting to be appreciated by his country. Mr. Rohee may have been put at the helm of the PPP in anticipation of street battles with the opposition but as a leader of an electoral party, he will be a huge problem.
It is impossible for the average person to understand why the PPP retains Dr. Luncheon as second-in-command and retained him in the executive after his twenty one years of ordinary performance that irritates most Guyanese. In addition, Dr. Luncheon is not in the best of health. He is not a person that the nation sees as a leader they want to rule Guyana. Neil Kumar would not find a place in any party in the democratic world.
A political party simply does not put such people in a leadership role. Even in military dictatorships, I don’t believe someone like Kellawan Lall would be allowed to remain in his post, given the shocking controversies that have characterized his career. I can honestly see the general that heads a brutal military dictatorship telling Lall that he has to go for the sake of the image of the regime. Clinton Collymore has no place in the hierarchy of a Caribbean party.
So why were these persons selected to be at the helm of the PPP after its Congress earlier this month? Why wasn’t the decision made to part with them because as the government gets older and the 2016 elections draw closer, it is natural for the PPP to present more credible faces? The answer is the culture of dictatorship. Dictatorship is a self-serving process. If you examine the historical record of dictatorships you will find that as the nation’s condemnations reverberate, the dictators draw closer to each other. The PPP will not change until it loses power.

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Additional notes on dictatorship

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