The PPP and the nation’s image of it

Nov 12, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

The annual Diwali motorcade is sponsored by a Hindu organization, Dharmic Sabha, once led by PPP patriarch, Reepu Daman Persaud before his death. Mr. Persaud’s family is now in charge. At each annual Diwali festival, the PPP leaders are paraded and politics is preached. In 2010, speaking to the gathering, Mr. Daman Persaud said that Mr. Jagdeo deserved a third term.
Without exception, the Dharmic Sabha Diwali spectacle each year is laced with partisan political speeches. This is in contrast to the Region Three festival which is sponsored by Swami Aksharananda. Not a word is said about politics and the Swami is respectful enough to his religion to know that as a national event politics should be kept out.
The 2013 Dharmic Sabha event exceeded all limits of human decency. The PPP participated in this year’s motorcade competition and guess what? I’ll come back to that. Do you know the name Rachel Maddow? For me, even against Rev. Al Sharpton, I would rate her as the best analytical commentator on television anywhere. Rev. Al is very good and he comes across charismatically but my choice is Maddow (both Sharpton and Maddow are on nightly television on MSNBC –broadcast from Channel 89 here in Guyana).
She holds a doctorate in political studies so she combines journalism with social sciences training. Maddow has a way of gesticulating when emphasizing a point that is powerfully unique. She holds you when she is revealing her discovery. I would give anything to see how Maddow would have announced who won the best motorcade prize for the Dharmic Sabha 2013 Diwali festival.
Do you think you know who the winner is? They say very uncontrollable laughing can harm. Because of that I should not tell you who the winner is? But you already know. A cultural organization attached to the PPP held its annual Diwali motorcade. For the first time, the PPP participated and won the contest. The PPP entered the competition under its youth name – the PYO.
I guess you would not be so silly to say the PYO and the PPP are two different organizations but I know a man who will.
Now if you are a betting person then bet all the money you have that Mr. Hydar Ally, a member of the Executive Committee of the PPP, will write and say that the PPP did not contest and the PPP did not win because it was the PYO that participated and not the PPP. If you bet you will win.
Years ago, I ran into the same Ally on the Berbice ferry and while occupying the same position he currently has in the PPP, he told me that he classifies himself as an independent political activist.
Ally knows what he is talking about. It is just that we, the public, don’t know how Ally defines the term, “independent.” Do you know that the PPP controlled Channel 65, Guyana Times and the Chronicle have formed a media entity titled IMAG- Independent Media Association of Guyana. Laugh as much as you want about the PPP’s use of the term, “independent” what you need to know is what they mean by the term.
As much as you want to be circumspect, the PPP lacerates its image each day in this country by the shameless things it does. People poke fun at the PPP and out of this comes disrespect. Clement Rohee calls a press conference to announce the birth of a PPP Integrity Commission but cannot name the full committee and don’t know when the full committee will be formed. Does the PPP intend for the nation to take it seriously?
What is the PPP, the party in office, doing in a Diwali contest? And who would believe that the winning entry was objectively judged. When all is said and done, in a sad, tragic country, the PPP makes you laugh. If there wasn’t the PPP, then maybe as a columnist I would have been depressed. But writing on the PPP gives me some light space to relax my mind.
To laugh at the Diwali contest think about the following comparison. Banks DIH, Republic Bank, DDL, GBTI, Toolsie Persaud, Gafoor Group of Companies etc, each holds a separate beauty contest in which the individual firm chaperoned a contestant and in each pageant, the winner was the young lady from the sponsoring firm. Who wouldn’t find that silly and facetious?
Trust the PPP to do a stupid thing like that. Do you know the PPP applied for two house lots and got them at Bath Settlement? Do you know who lives in them? Now that is corruption!

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The PPP and the nation’s image of it

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