The politics of confusion or brutal power?

Jan 23, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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To the average person in Guyana, the politics of the PPP is confusing and this may go beyond the average citizen, even opposition politicians and analysts. How do you explain the virtual runaway train of unpopular policies by the Government, yet the constant exclamations from the PPP leadership and its lackeys in the Private Sector Commission (PSC), that the opposition undermines the good intentions of the Government?
It simply does not make sense. It has no logic. It is amazingly confusing. Perhaps we can offer a hypothetical example. I am the deputy headmaster. I make proposals often to change some things about the school.
On each submission, the headmaster rejects it saying he must be consulted. Why am I going to continue that course of action only to find it is a waste of time? Would it not be commonsensical to discuss your new suggestions with him?
Former President, Jagdeo got up at the Convention Centre and screamed out; “They killed hydro-power” after Sithe Global ceased operations. He named the killers. All were critics of the government and some aligned to the opposition. Then the screams were heard again about mining in the New River Triangle when the Brazilian company pulled out.
Minister after Minister, including past president Jagdeo and President Ramotar, on every occasion where the opportunity comes up, yells out that the Kaieteur News and Stabroek News are devastating Guyana’s image and wrecking prospects of foreign investments.
The new tune by both the PPP leadership and the PSC is that the opposition majority is wreaking havoc on social stability through its refusal to cooperate with the Government.
When the Government and the PSC make these claims they are openly conceding that the Government does not command the society and the opposition has latitude to influence the Guyanese people.
In his latest interview so far with the New Yorker magazine, President Obama openly conceded that his latitude to change the direction of the United States in accordance with what he set out to do when he was elected in 2008 is seriously circumscribed by the nature of power in the US.
Time after time, President Obama has made reference to the obstruction of the Republicans in the House of Representatives.
Maybe the government and the PSC do not want to be as honest and open as President Obama, and concede that in criticizing the opposition for hindering development, they are in fact acknowledging (as President Obama did in the New Yorker) that power is distributed in other quarters and not only in the presidency.
The confusion comes in when you constantly exclaim that the opposition is hurting Guyana, but you are not prepared to concede an inch of territory, not only to the opposition, but even stakeholders that are not in Parliament and have no interest in being in Parliament. The most conspicuous characteristic of the PPP regime is that there is no lull in its authoritarian overdrive.
Day after day, the PPP regime pursues policies that are not only unpopular, unpleasant, insensitive, but downright brutal and cruel.
There is no lull. Yesterday it was the horrible five percent increase for public servants. Today it is the terrible handling of the Colwyn Harding beating by the police. Tomorrow it will be another atrocity. Then in March, it will be the budget impasse.
The confusion is simply mind-boggling. Why refuse a request from the relevant ethnic constituency to put a monument where they want it. It is their history and their culture. There is no logical reason to refuse them. But the Government did.
Why sugar-coat the brutal beating of an accused when you know the police are accustomed to abusing the law? The enigmatic fact emblazoned on the clothes of the PPP is its daily excesses that seem unstoppable, much of which are avoidable, and commonsensically so. Why invoke the wrath of African Guyanese over a monument that concerns African Guyanese? Why award a tiny percentage to public servants that is essentially insulting?
Why would any government appeal a court case in which a fifteen-year-old was awarded 30,000 American dollars after he was tortured and burnt badly by the police? Yet in the same breath you scream that the opposition and government critics are hindering progress.
Why not shut the opposition and your critics up by being a nice guy just for once? Can’t the PPP be nice just for once?
So is there really confusion? Or is the PPP fully aware of the horrible mistakes it is making but is content to drown in a sea of brutal power?
“Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.”

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