The problem with street politics is a deadly one

Dec 06, 2013 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

No one can deny that the PNC is setting on a bed of thorns. A good example of this is a letter in the Stabroek News yesterday written by two stalwarts from the Working People’s Alliance, Abyssinian Carto and Dr. Nigel Westmaas, the latter who gave his entire youth to politics fighting the Burnham Government in the seventies and eighties.
Captioned, “The mountain of written and spoken protest has not shifted the government,” here is a moving passage in this angst-ridden letter.
“Isn’t it time the range of protest is extended? Human beings have a range of other peaceful options of protest…even closing down the city until the garbage problem is seriously addressed…As hard as it can be to muster the time, courage, and resolve to draw oneself into public and collective protest, it works over time in all societies including Guyana.”
This strong advocacy has been reverberating in Guyana since Mr. Jagdeo became extremist in his policies. The PNC has taken the brunt of it. Then after the 2011 election results, the PNC became virtually besieged in the letter pages of the two independent dailies by Guyanese who have urged that the Government needs to be pressed to stop its unjust policies.
Even the AFC was not spared, with people calling upon the party to act, thus equating the AFC with the larger and more resourceful PNC.
Under Mr. Jagdeo, there was no intensification of street protest and in Mr. Ramotar’s tenure there was only the rebellion in Linden over the electricity tariff hike. The demands on the PNC and AFC will continue into the New Year. The question is, what can the PNC do (I don’t believe the AFC can bring out the numbers like the PNC, so the rest of this analysis will centre on the PNC)?
The common thread uniting all the castigators of the PNC and AFC is that there must be extra-parliamentary dimensions, because the PPP Government is not going to go to the table and offer democratic concessions. Almost inevitably, when you ask these critics what they mean by upping the tempo, they refer you to street protest. The Carto-Westmaas letter follows in that tradition with the advice to close down Georgetown.
Guyana’s polity is very different from a majority of countries in the world. When people take to the streets in Thailand and the Ukraine as is presently going on, it is a homogeneous population out on the streets. There is no scope for ethnic manipulation. Street protest in Guyana led by the PNC has a deadly hurdle that no great leader in the PNC can surmount.
The PNC is very strong in Georgetown. The PNC supporters are predominantly African. While urban rebellion is occurring in Georgetown, the PPP constituencies in Berbice and Essequibo are quiet. It is easy then for devious politicians to destroy the integrity of peaceful city protest by conspiring to create ethnic violence and blame both the PNC and its supporters.
This has happened in every urban demonstration the PNC has organized. The movement was infiltrated by agent provocateurs and the PNC was stigmatized. The PPP reaped monumental electoral capital in subsequent elections.
An ugly reminder of this was a speech in Parliament in which a PPP parliamentarian inside the National Assembly made some ugly remarks about Moses Nagamotoo being involved in violence during the skirmishes at Agricola last year. It was complete fiction. Nagamootoo was nowhere in Agricola that afternoon, but this parliamentarian was playing the race card and directing it to Berbicians.
Dr. David Hinds and I were told by influential players in the PNC that had the PNC shown solidarity in Georgetown with the Linden protestors, then, the conspiracy of ethnic manipulation would have occurred. How does the PNC get out of this hopeless trap? It cannot. And any analyst of Guyana’s political culture would tell you that the ethnic factor plays into the hands of the PPP when there are urban demonstrations.
Most, if not all, keen observers of Guyana’s politics would tell you that the PNC has only one route to go if it accepts the advocacy of countless Guyanese that it has to be more forceful and go the extra-parliamentary road – it can no longer take part in national elections under the present constitution.
This writer’s opinion is the moment the PNC takes to the streets, Berbice and Essequibo will be rallied to see the PNC as the perennial bad guy. Then elections are held, and the PPP wins. My advice to the PNC is that if it accepts to participate in the next election, then stay off the streets.

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The problem with street politics is a deadly one

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